Summer 2002 No. 13

Page 7

These trifling scares were followed towards the close of March by an incident they never forgot – an incident which caused the otter even greater consternation than it caused the cubs. It happened late one afternoon. The male cub had awakened from his second sleep and, with head resting on his mother’s flank, sat looking at the light fade over the wind-swept morass. During a lull an unaccountable rustling in the reeds caught his ears and brought him to his feet. The startled movement aroused his mother and sister, and in a trice all three otters were watching from behind the grass screen for a sight of the noisy intruder. The next instant they saw a fox, bedraggled almost beyond recognition, stagger from the reeds, drop from the bank to the stream, lap, raise his head and listen, lap again, then toil with bog-stained body and sodden brush up the opposite bank and pass from view. He could not have got far beyond the river, for which he seemed to be heading, before a hound came in sight, then two more, followed almost immediately by the body of the pack, which poured over the brow of the upland and streamed down a gully towards the morass. Soon they had disappeared, but whine after whine reached the otter’s ears, mingled with the crashing of the brake as the pack approached the stream and swept by full in their view. Some minutes later two yapping, bog-stained terriers crossed, and then the morass resumed its wonted calm. All this the otters had watched, hissing through their bared teeth, eyes starting from their sockets, and hair bristling erect on their thick necks: even when all was quiet again a great dread still possessed them. Their feral nature had been stirred to the depths, and they listened and listened, though no sound reached them save a faint toot of the horn. Setting out time came and went, but the otters did not stir, till at length, taking heart from the owls, who filled the wood with their wild hooting, they stole down to the river.

The otter fished, but not a moment was given to gambolling, and long ere the woodman’s bantam heralded the day the scared creatures sought harbourage in the branches of a fallen pine whose top lay half immersed in the river. Hidden amidst the flotsam caught by the boughs, with the deep pool just below them, they felt safe, and at length slept as soundly as they had done in the morass.”

From another Angle

The angling magazine ‘Waterlog’ includes a regular ‘obituaries and accolades’ feature. In a recent issue among the items in the obituary column was the following: ‘To the death of the largest carp (a 13-pounder) in Hugh Miles’ quarter acre garden pond’. While among the accolades (‘please raise a glass to the following’) appeared: “To the otter who managed to negotiate the narrow winding stream all the way from the River Stour near Wimborne to Hugh Miles’ back garden at Corfe Mullen to nab a 13lb carp’.

Also included among the ‘obituaries’:
‘To the slow death of environmental responsibility among some of the riparian owners of the Hampshire Avon valley. Though this magnificent chalk stream has long been designated an SSSI, it is still being degraded by the following activities: extensive ploughing of former pasture land with no buffer strips to protect the river from siltation and chemical fertiliser, water abstraction, intensive trout farming, bankside erosion through over-grazing, and siltation and pollution due to large areas of waterside maize crops’.

A reminder that anglers can play an important part in highlighting the threats to our watery environment.