Looking back on it, I was something of a fool; the signs had been there for years but it took a fall of January snow finally to reveal what I should have known all along. As night turned into day, the virgin snow around the lake was anything but virgin, the peninsula that divided the lake from the river criss-crossed with seemingly a thousand footprints or more. From river to lake, lake to river and back again, the night-time visitors had clearly been busy, the five clawed paw prints exposing the green grass beneath the broken snow. This animal runway was as churned up as any busy city-centre pavement, but with particularities that told its own unique tale.
The river bank spoke of great effort, the snow ground into mud. Deep impressions in the turf atop the bank were clearly purchase points, the lower bank a mess of icy earth where the creatures had scrabbled to haul themselves from the water. Where the track marks met the lake was a different story. An icy slide, which looked as fun as that of any water park, was worn smooth with regular use, forming the connection between land and water. At the approach a patch of snow, maybe the size of a large door mat, was crushed flat – smooth evidence, to my mind at least, of someone or something lying and rolling in the snow.
In the dull light of pre-dawn one corner of battered snow beneath the tall alder caught my eye. It looked different to the rest and, sure enough, as I approached I could see the mottled snow was flecked with blood, with a bright red patch at its centre. Little bright silvery grey specks, at first unfamiliar, decorated this collage of nature. I stooped down, licked my finger and dabbed at one. A fish scale, shining like translucent mother-of-pearl, glinted back at me. The cogs in my head were gradually clicking into alignment.
A raspy, wheezy cough cut through the silence, and there, at the base of the alder, on the roots that formed a sinewy platform at the lake edge, sat the otter that I would one day know as Kuschta. In truth, she seemed calmer about our accidental meeting than I was. In that fraction of a second in which our eyes locked she assessed me, dismissed me as irrelevant and then turned, in one fluid movement pouring herself into the lake. I, on the other hand, stood rooted to the spot, uncertain what to say or do. I mean really, how daft is that – what could you ever say to an otter? Or do? Well, I did nothing. She, clearly the more evolved one in this particular situation, surfaced a few yards out from the bank before heading for the island that sits in the middle of the lake. On reaching its edge she emitted a single eek, which was echoed a moment later by a short symphony of eeks that soon took form as four dark shapes plopped from the island into the water to join her.
From my rooted spot I could easily track the progress of the swimming party across the lake as they set course for the outflow where it joined the river at the waterfall created by the weir. The five flat, domed heads glistened against the inky blackness of the water. They were hurried rather than panicked, with the young otters swimming in a rough V formation behind their mother. As they scrambled over the weir I lost sight of each in turn, but it was a long time before I knew they were completely gone. For a while as they headed downstream I could hear them cavorting and splashing as they went, eeking to each other every few seconds in that otterly way that says, ‘Don’t worry, I’m fine, I’m still with you.’
But eventually all I had was silence and the red sky of dawn. Somewhere downstream, in the water meadows and woods that border the river, the otters would seek refuge from the day, curling up in the warm, dry comfort of a rotten tree trunk until dark. I’d lost them for now but somehow I knew they would return.
Two years earlier
As dusk started to fall, Kuschta gradually uncoiled her body, stretching away the stiffness of a day spent asleep. Sniffing the air, she could tell the holt was empty without even opening her eyes. There was nothing unusual in that, but she was comforted by the slight warmth radiating from the indentation left by her mother in the soft bed of the rotten willow trunk which they shared. She was clearly not long gone. Kuschta weighed up her options. She guessed her mother would not be far, probably down at the weir pool diving for eels – easy pickings, as they gathered in great numbers before their summer migration to the sea.
In truth, Kuschta had options, but only of the no-win kind. On that fateful evening the outcome was to be the same, whatever her decision. Whether she stayed in the holt or went in search of her mother she was destined to greet the following dawn alone. But knowing none of that, Kuschta assumed her mother would return as she had done every day of her fourteen-month life. Maybe with a tasty eel that they would share? So oblivious to the future, Kuschta chose to stay put, recoiled herself, buried her nose in the crook of her hind leg, closed her eyes and was instantly asleep.
You could walk close by the spot where Kuschta slept and not give it a second glance. In fact, I’d hazard that even if you stopped and stared you might not be much the wiser. Otters are not like badgers, which dig elaborate setts, creating multiple cave-like entrances with the spoil of their digging spread around for all to see. In their choice of home otters are pragmatists, moving between ‘holts’, which are usually tunnels amidst the roots of trees beside the river, and ‘couches’, well-concealed resting places above ground. Neither is particularly easy to spot because they are so much a part of the landscape, used by generation after generation of otters. Twenty, thirty, forty years of continuous use is not uncommon – even a century has been recorded. This we know from otter hunts that combed every inch of bank until they were banned in the 1970s. A diligent huntsman would know every hover, as some called them, returning time and again to seek out their prey and record the locations for future hunts.
Otters are not builders like, say, beavers; they take what they find and adapt it. The best holts are created by Mother Nature. An ash or a sycamore grows tall beside the river until gravity takes a hold as the water erodes the bank beneath, so the tree starts to lean out over the river. These trees are well adapted to such a pose, the wide shallow roots providing enough support for some considerable elevations of lean. But it is in that process of tipping that the den is made; the movement lifts the bank to create a cavity under the roots, which in turn becomes the canopy of the holt. And in the otters go. Some judicious digging will create a labyrinth of dry tunnels and, if all goes according to plan, there may even be an underwater connection to the river.
Couches, on the other hand, are rather more at the making of otters, but they are, as the name suggests, the more informal of the two habitats. A pile of reeds, dry moss or leaves in a thicket of brambles a few yards from the river would be typical. It’s more of a good weather than a bad weather sort of place, though not always. In wet flood plains where dry holts are scarce, elaborate couches are created as alternative homes, but more generally the couch is the resting place where otters feel safe to sleep, catch the sun and play whilst whiling away the daylight hours, hidden from view.
I guess Kuschta would care little for my subtle differentiation between couches and holts. All she knew was that the hollowed-out crack in the willow branch had long been a favoured resting place for the family; warm, inviting and familiar. The willows that thrived by the river had this strange way of growing that helped the otters; shooting up fast, they soon outgrow themselves so much that