OTTERS WILD AND TAME.
ANOT very happy record has been added to the annals of Chelsea. it seems that early in the morning of March 26th a milkman on his rounds discovered an otter in the garden of one of the houses in Cheyne Walk. He decided to try to catch it, and, as his efforts attracted the notice of iiasscra-by and a policeman, there was soon a large crowd engaged in the "hunt." The servants from the house joined
in the chase, and in doing so, apparently, left a side door
open, through which the otter bolted. It hid under a piece of furniture, and when the furniture was moved ran back into the road again, when a workman managed to catch bold of it : the otter, however, was so inconsiderate as to bite him twice, and he lot go. It tried several times to get back into the river, but each time the crowd headed it back, and the end of the senseless and cruel business was that a butler brought a gun and shot it. Possibly those who joined in the " hunt" may have asked themselves since what were the reasons —if they can be supposed to have had any—which prompted them to harry and kill this unfortunate creature. Its appearance in Chelsea may possibly be accounted for by the floods, which would have rendered its usual haunts un- recognizable, or which may have carried it down stream till it could find a possible landing-place. In any case, it is reported to have been merely " searching for food " in what must have seemed to it very puzzling surroundings. The idea of feeding it does not seem to have occurred to any one, though no doubt, for that matter, it would have been too shy to take food with a crowd looking on. It might possibly have been encouraged to feed, and perhaps to return again to the same place, if it had been left alone or allowed to return to the water; but that possibility, too, does not seem to have been considered. The proper treatment of a stray, wild creature, it was decided, is that it should be shot.
An otter searching for food may possibly suggest, to
those who are unfamiliar with its habits, a raid on a fish- monger's stall or a pantry. But it is a mistake to suppose that otters eat only fish. As a fact, otters are almost omnivorous animals, with a preference for fish or flesh, but able to relish all sorts of other kinds of food. Frogs, snails, and eels are part of an inland otter's staple diet ; sea- otters, besides fish, eat molluscs and lobsters. In Messrs. Harvie-Brown and Buckley's " Vertebrate Fauna of Argyll and the Inner Hebrides" there is an interesting description of the digging-out of a sea-otters' resting place in one of the western isles. Its discoverers out through the peat and opened up a channel about fifteen feet in length and a foot in diameter, widened out at intervals into chambers which were worn smooth and glossy by the otters' fur. Two or three feet from the entrance to the hole was the otters' kitchen-midden, which consisted of " a very considerable heap of the domestic rejectamenta,' not Is than five or six inches in height and nine inches in width. This occupied a side-chamber made to one side of the tunnel. Harvie- Brown gathered up a handful of this material, which on examination was found to consist of fragments of shells of mollusca, and upon a more minute examination afterwards remains of fish, lobster shells, and the hair of some small mammal were identified." But otters do not confine them- selves to small mammals. Mr. J. E. Harting, writing in the Zoologist in 1894, mentions an instance of a cock grouse being killed by an otter on the open moor at Dalnaspidal in Perthshire in 1885; and Mr. J. G. Millais, in his delightful "British Mammals," adds to Mr. Harting's testimony the fact that he himself was shown by the late James Keay, the game- keeper at Murthly, the remains of a hen-pheasant which un- doubtedly had beet' killed by an otter in a covert near the Tay. Instances of otters attacking wild ducks have fre- quently been published in the Field: for instance, on January 15th, 1898, a correspondent wrote from Roath, Cardiff, to chronicle the fact that a large otter had taken up his quarters in Reath Park and was devouring the wild duck ; it showed a particular fancy for the black cayuga ducks. But it is seldom,.owing to its shy and cautious habits, that an otter, however frequently and regularly it may feed, is actully observed in its wild state catching and killing fish or other creatures. Tame otters, of course, can bo watched at all times and seasons. The writer many years ago was able to watch an otter which had been caught in the Thames, and which seemed to have become used to the idea of captivity extraordinarily quickly. It was fed on live bleak and other small fish, which were thrown into a tank, and which it caught with astonishing quickness and swallowed whole. Perhaps the best account of an otter hunting its prey in a wild state is given by John Stuart in "Lays of the Deer Forest." Ho describes how he was idly watching the stream of the Beauly when he saw two otters coming down stream " floating one after the other, their legs spread out like flying squirrels, and steering with their tails, the tips of which showed above the water like the rudder of an Elbe smite. Down they came as flat as floating skins upon the water, but their round, short heads and black eyes con- stantly in motion, examining with eager vigilance every neuk and rock which they passed." Three salmon, the watcher on the bank could see, lay in front of the otters, in about eight feet of water. In a flash they were gone, and where the otters had been were two rings on the surface. " In the next instant there was a, rush and a swirl in the deep water under the rock on the west side, and a long shooting line going down to the rapid, like the ridge which appears above the back fin of a fish in motion. Near the tail of a pool there was another rush and turn, and the two long lines of bubbles showed that the otters were returning. Immediately after- wards the large salmon came out of the water with a spring of more than two yards, and just as he returned the otter struck him behind the gills and they disappeared together, leaving a star of bright scales upon the surface." The chase ended with one of the otters fixing the salmon by the shoulder fin, when he was dragged up the bank apparently quite dead.
Otters, of course, can be tamed, and make delightful pets. A charming description of a tame• otter was given in the Field of December 17th, 1904, by Mr. Arthur Heinemann. The name of the otter was Loo, and she was " dug out one day last June on the Torridge, and then weighed about 15 lb. She readily took to the bottle, which was a Mawe's patent feeder, filled with much diluted milk, one part milk to three parts of water, and given lukewarm. She would lie on the ground and clasp the bottle with her little pads and suck away contentedly. She is now about the size and weight of a big rabbit, but, as it is unlucky to weigh babies, Leo has not been put in the scales." Her food was varied : snails, crabs, herrings, rabbits, small birds, moorhens, and a frog. She would not look at field mice, and when she was put into a tub with a rat she attacked it, but would not kill it. "She has a wonderfully bright and full eye, all black like a boot button, and shows a lot of the white in the corner, which gives her a very wild and fierce look. Running water from tap or waterfall causes her infinite delight, as she rolls over and over on her back beneath it. Her cries are many and varied : a hiss when she plays or is frightened; a squeal or scream when she is in a rage or if I show her a bass broom ; and a short, sharp, bird-like whistle or call which she utters in answer to mine, or when she hears my voice or footstep. She follows well, comes to my whistle, and will come out of the stream at my call. She has no fear of dogs or cats, and is most mischievous and playful in the house, tearing and shaking rugs and curtains, and delighting to get in behind the books in my bookcase and turn them all out on the floor. She follows well in the dark, is not nearly so shy and nervous of strangers approaching as tame badgers are, and can be handled suddenly without attempting to bite. She has only shed her coat once since I have had her, and she is now doing so, but slowly. She curls herself up to sleep, holding one of her hind pads in her mouth, and keeping it there with her two fore ones." Mr. Millais, by the way, in writing of tame otters, remarks that they hate being stroked on the head or touched about the nose or whiskers, and that if they are handled in this way they nearly always attempt to bite. But it is not necessary to go to printed descriptions to know something of what a tame otter can bo. There is no pleasanter way of spending half an hour than by watching the otters in their pond at the Zoo. One in particular is gentle and affectionate, and recognizes friends when she sees them ; she will run in December 1911 every imaginable measure of corruption mewing after Chores whom she suspects to be carrying cake, and violence was employed; many of the Opposition deputies for which she will sit up and beg. It is, perhaps, not right to were summarily expelled from their constituencies or placed give her cake, nor do the rules of the Gardens encourage under police supervision; others were arrested and only adding oranges to her store of playthings. But if she te in released after the close of the election ; meetings were for- the mood for an orange she tosses it about, dives over and bidden wholesale; canvassing was rendered impossible ; active under it, rolls it over, balances it on her nose ; not for long. officials " stood " as candidates or organized the Government perhaps; for she will look for a now game, but while the game campaign ; voters were fined, arrested, held back from
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