Monday, January 31, 2011

A very fortunate otter.

Early on the morning of Saturday 29th January 2011 we received a telephone call from Kim, a lady living on a large country estate in our area, with an unusual tale to tell.

In the middle of the previous evening she had come out of her house to collect firewood from her stack. It was very cold, dry and dark. She was close by her front door when she heard a strange repetitive squeaking and then out of the gloom came a young otter cub.

It walked right to her feet and stood there, still squeaking, looking up at her and certainly in need of some help. Where it had come from was a bit of a mystery; Kim lives at the top of a large hill around half a mile from the nearest natural water.

Kim was of course a little taken aback at this and whilst thinking about how to help the poor youngster she retreated back to her house; she may have been thinking of how to capture the cub but it seemed to read her mind and followed her through her front door and into her house and saved her the effort!

Shortly afterwards the young animal was tucked up for the night in a comfortable dog crate with water, some rainbow trout and two pigeon breasts which, although not typical otter food, seemed to go down very well.

The following morning Kim rang us and we went over to see how we could help. The cub was a fighting fit 8 or 9 week old with no obvious illness or injury, we didn’t manage to sex it (after the third bite on my arm I thought it probably wasn’t that important anyway).

We had a chat with Michael, Kim’s neighbour, who knew that otters had been seen recently playing under a nearby bridge in an isolated location and we decided to try and reunite the cub with its mum there. Mandy and I did this once before and our feeling was that because otter mothers are so devoted she was unlikely to leave the area without searching for her offspring. If we acted quickly enough she was still likely to be hanging around.

We all travelled down to the bridge in question and searched for signs of mum, but if she was there, she wasn’t going to make it easy for us to find her. The cub wasn’t helping much either, it was in a small cat box we had brought with us sleeping off its large breakfast under a very colourful old towel.

The box cannot be opened from the inside by the cub but it can be opened from the outside by mum if she pulls it towards herself which is what most otters do. She was also the only otter likely to be in the near vicinity as our British Otters are territorial animals. So with that in mind we decided to leave the cub in the box near to the riverside and return to it at dusk.

Several hours later three of us returned to the site and from a distance the box looked exactly as we had left it; there were no signs of mum.

I approached the box and as I neared it I could see the towel inside, about the size of the cub and the right shape and I thought that the cub was still in there. But as I got even closer I could see that the red door had been pulled open and that there were large muddy paw prints both on and inside the box. Just to be sure I picked up the box and it was far too light to contain the cub. The cub was clean as a whistle when we put it in wrapped in the towel so the mud had come from something else. We are very confident that mum had returned and collected her baby. A very satisfying result and well worth the efforts of all those involved.

Wednesday, January 5, 2011

December update

December, December, December… where to begin? Let’s start with the weather! Over the festive period the park was hit with a couple of inches of snow, meaning hot water wasn’t working at times, fish were freezing under 9 inches of ice, and wallabies were wandering over the ice and getting stuck on the island in the middle of the Waterfowl Lake.

We also celebrated a birthday, our Asian Short-Clawed Otter; Sonny, turned thirteen on the 23rd December. Her age is starting to show, so she is now receiving an extra meal every day during the cold months and plenty of fresh straw for her bedding.

On Boxing Day a small Joey (baby Wallaby) was found and looked as though it was starting to give in to the weather, as it’s mother had an early offspring this time around and wouldn’t let the older Joey inside the pouch, so the youngster spent a week altogether under the care of the Keepers and their families.

Our first main task of the winter has been completed, and now the Scottish Wildcats enjoy a 3rd section to their enclosure they now have an elevated feeding station, new shelters and a steeper terrain.

Our juvenile Snowy Owl; Tooki has been free flying, though he’s not always as well behaved as we’d like him to be. He has sometimes proved hard to get back and had to be retrieved from a neighbouring field in early December.

The Otters have been enjoying the new additions to their winter diet which are aimed at keeping them warm. All of them love hard boiled eggs and all but Biggy thoroughly enjoy warm baked potatoes with mince stuffing.

The lowlight for the Otters this month is that Leah, a female Asian Short-Clawed Otter has had two infections in her mouth which makes eating difficult for her. She is going to have an operation on Friday 7th January to correct this problem with her teeth.

Make sure to keep an eye on the page for your January Otter update.