After just a few minutes there, I was surprised to see a river otter poke its head up. Now those of you who have seen a river otter before, you should skip right over to the next paragraph. But those of you who have not, let me describe it for you. Regardless of what you might find at Wikipedia, the river otter, an amphibian (not that there's anything wrong with that), is a fearsome creature with long, sharp fangs and razor-like claws. They can grow to ten feet in length and are reputed to have stolen cats, small dogs and even unattended babies from backyards. With fur as tough as steel and lightning fast reflexes they are in short, viciously ruthless killers.
As I was saying, this bloodthirsty creature popped out of the water and began to swim towards the center of the river, moving slightly upstream. He (I say he, but that's really just a literary convenience, it could just as easily have been a little lady otter) appeared at first to give me nary a glance, but as I watched him, a curious thing happened. With obvious annoyance he raised his head slightly, looked towards the bank in my direction, then dove beneath the water with a loud slap of his tail against its surface.
Now on the face of it, this action might be considered as just some cute little animal fun. But I had seen the look in his eye and I knew the truth. Without the benefit of vocal cords, this otter was talking trash at me. Any doubt I might have had about this supposition (not that there was any), was entirely erased moments later (or would have been had there been any). Having taken a deep dive, he resurfaced slightly downstream, turned and headed back towards me, this time coming closer to the bank.
Somewhat taken aback by his behavior, I hesitated, and for doing so received another audible assault. It was nearly a repetition of the early incident, but this time he whacked the water even harder. It was clear, that tail slapping was meant for me, and it wasn't a friendly "Hello." At this point I knew I couldn't just sit back on my heels. So I watched carefully to see when and where he would come up next. It didn't take long. He had taken advantage of his secret submarine skills and drawn himself even closer to the shoreline. But I was ready for him. You see my highly evolved human mind also took advantage of his secret submarine skills and so by the time he had resurfaced, I was at the water's edge. Before he had a chance to lash out at me again, I slapped my hand down on the surface of the river and relished the smacking sound it produced. If he wanted to talk trash, well I was down with that.
So I got his attention (along with wet pants). He tread water for a moment, raised his arrogant head slightly, and then plunged down again with totally tame tail slap. Clearly I had him rattled. When he popped up next he was well upstream and he continued swimming that way, the ripples of his motion rolling gently away from his body towards both shores. I had called his bluff and he backed down, the wimp.River otters aren't particularly social critters but they can cover a fairly large territory and are bound to run into each other now and again. So by now I'd guess most of his buddies have heard about the guy who won't take any lip from trash talking river otters and I don't expect my peaceful evening reverie will be spoiled again for a while. You know who owns this river now Mistuh Ottuh, and you'd best be glidin' by nice and quiet next time your on my turf or we'll see who really knows how to slap some tail...
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