An otter in the evening
An otter in the evening
Originally uploaded by thehumanstomach
Friday evening and after a stressful week, I set off to the Barony for an evening with friends from Shanghai who are in town for the weekend. Its a glorious late spring evening, slightly cloudy and warm! So I decide to take a longer route along the river as dusk settles. Walking under the trees, coming up to a bridge, I see movement in the slow still waters. "A duck." I think, "diving for food on the bottom." But then no, I see not a smooth dive and dip, but rather a rolling twisting motion. And then a head appears above the water and I clearly see teeth chomping up and down.
It disappears again; a track of bubbles rising to the surface is coming towards me! It hasn't see me standing there in the middle of the low bridge. I squash myself slowly down, to try to appear a less human shape. I am rewarded by the otter continuing to hunt for food, either that or it knows I'm there and just doesn't care.
It comes closer right under the bridge and I can see it under water, it's body moving from side to side, and head scanning the river bottom.
As it goes under the bridge I remember that I have my iphone. I carefully draw it from my pocket punch in the passcode. The damn camera app seems to take an age to load. The otter resurfaces on the other side of the bridge and I quickly manage a couple of shots. Then I hear the heavy pounding of a jogger, and the tinny white noise of her headphones. I wave at her desperately to slow and stop, and I point excitedly to the otter, quitely hissing "It's an otter!" She doesn't seem to share my excitement, but does try to tell me about the big bird she has seen further up the river. She is foreign and can't remember the word. "A heron?", she nods. "Tchah!" I think, "Ten-a-penny", while suppressing the desire, to scream "That's a bloody otter! You foolish woman! In the middle of the city!"
Meanwhile the otter has swum further up river under water and by the time I spot it again its too far away to photograph.
Resuming my walk into town I post the photo on line, but decide that posting "Photo of a drowning jogger" would be an admission of guilt