I took this picture in
Derbyshire, of a mysterious creature that was swimming in a lake at high speed. I will let you guess for a moment what this strange and unsettling critter is... Did you find out? It's an...
otter. The picture was taken in an otter sanctuary. I had a look at it recently, when I was writing
this post, and it struck me that this could easily pass for one of these pictures of lake monsters that folklore and
cryptozoology are fond of. But no, the beast in the water was only a mundane otter. Which is just as well, because while I stopped believing in cryptids, I always loved otters.
Have you heard about the otter who moved into the Sun Yat-Sen Japanese Garden in Vancouver and is now busily eating all the koi in the ornamental ponds? It's big news here in Canada. They are unsuccessfully trying to (live) trap it. I don't see why they just don't fish all the koi out of the water and move them elsewhere to persuade the otter to move on. That would be easier, I think.
ReplyDeleteUpdate -- they took my advice and removed all the fish. The otter ate 10 koi. Only 3 were left and a bunch of baby fish. Now that the fish are gone, the otter has not been seen for 3 days. The Garden is reopening to the public tomorrow.
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