The Otter

The following is a short story written about an otter, for no other reason other than my friend texted me and told me to write a short story about an otter.

What do you like to do on your lunchbreak in downtown Glenville? Go for a cold-pressed juice? (Not me.) Get those amazing potatoes from the taco truck in Placid Park? Duck into one of the art galleries? My coworker likes to go to Ray’s Used Books to see what’s new. Plus I think she has a crush on the barista there (Seriously, are man buns the siren call for female millennials?).

Me? Well, OK, I walk down to the zoo. I have a member card, so I go almost every day. I breeze through the entrance, past the gift shop, through the savannah wildlife, the Arctic Zone and the Amazon. And straight to the Animals of North America section. Particularly one animal paddock: the North American River Otter. 

I’m 34 years old with a decent career doing PR and communications for a law firm. An intelligent, mature woman, by some people’s definition. I’m not usually the life of the party, but I love my friends and good conversation; I like to ask a lot of questions. I think it’s my journalism degree. Anyway, I already feel like I’m defending myself. I’m trying to demonstrate here that I’m a normal person before I reveal the following. 

Going to the zoo is more than a lunch break diversion. There are six otters in the otter exhibit, but one in particular is, dare I say it, my friend. Trina, after the subfamily scientific classification Lutrinae. It’s not like a pet friendship though; I mean, I’ve never actually even pet her. I do talk to her, albeit in my head so no one standing around me at the exhibit thinks I’m a total weirdo. 

Although I think I’m a weirdo. Who’s obsessed with an otter? Everyone has something they’re weird about, but I think sometimes I use that as an excuse. And to further my embarrassment, I must confess I started visiting the zoo on my lunch break right after a breakup. I was definitely aimless and just looking for things to do during that murky, terrible time when your heart is putty and the future is so bleak—the whole future, not just your romantic life. And you’re fighting for distractions and clawing for reason, like a new hobby is both a present diversion and also an insurance in the future that you’ll be able to look back and see a reason as to why what happened happened. “Why, yes, it was hard, but I would’ve never fill-in-the-blank had we not went our separate ways.” Oh, to be so evolved.

Anyway, the zoo seemed like the perfect place to go where I could be around people and living things in general but not have to talk to anyone. I remember the first few times I went I spent a lot of time in the Arctic Zone because of how chilly it felt in there, and I saw it as a metaphor for my heart. I know, I know. You can roll your eyes. I am too.

One particular day I found myself walking straight past the Arctic Zone. I wish I could tell you it was because I was healing and able to move on from the cold, but to be totally honest, there was a roasted nuts cart, you know the ones like you see on the streets of New York City. The cart man handed me my triangular wax paper cone filled with honey roasted cashews, and I stood there trying my hardest not to just tip the cone back and dump the nuts straight into my mouth. So I casually popped them in one by one, allowing myself a couple seconds to suck the sweetness off the outer part of the cashew, but not too much, because part of the enjoyment of eating sweet roasted nuts is biting through that almost crispy sugary coating.

I meandered on my way and found myself in the Animals of North America section. Even though North America covers a lot of ground and environments, the Glenville Zoo seems mostly obsessed with the climate and landscape of the Pacific Northwest. Not as cold as the Arctic Zone, the North America section possesses a coolness and darkness, you know, like the kind you’d find in the forests of Washington or Oregon. I can’t believe I’m referencing this, but have you seen the movie Twilight? Kind of like that. They even have this special mist effect every 45 minutes to give the impression of the region’s regular rain. Some of the paddocks are more expansive, like for the moose and the bears, but the enclosures for the smaller animals are more compact and grouped closer together.

I remember standing there with my cashews, finally having stopped eating them long enough to realize I was in front of the otter enclosure. At the time there were about 12 otters, 8 males and 4 females. Although I didn’t know it was her at the time, Trina was perched on a rock, her head toward the glass window. She had a pink clip in her ear; all the otters have clips, and they’re all color coded.

The otter paddock is such that half of it is a little pond, a cross-section of which is viewable from the guest area. I watched Trina slide off the rock and into the water, swirling, twirling in the water, an effortless glide, the smoothest displacement of water as she flitted about. The little informational sign next to the exhibit told me that otters have the densest fur of any mammal and that they are generally social, curious animals. The plaque also listed the names of the otters and what color clip they were wearing, which is how I discovered Trina. 

Anyway, there really is no depth to the reason as to why I latched onto Trina specifically, other than I think she was the first otter I saw, and then I associated her with the pink clip in her ear. It wasn’t Trina that brought me back to the otter paddock the next day either but rather my search for the roasted nuts. The cart had moved to the other side of the park near the Savannah Lands an attendant told me, but I stayed with the otters again, watching the gracefulness and assuredness that I felt like I was severely lacking in my life at that point. And then, it became a game of observation. I made myself forget about the roasted nuts cart, which incidentally moved to various parts of the zoo for lunch every day. But I kept revisiting the otters, and sometimes I’d take an early break to catch feeding times, and there’s something about an otter’s dual layer of fur that’s fascinating to watch in the water and then while it’s drying. 

I’d ask Trina in my head how she did it, how she knew exactly what she wanted to do next, how she instinctively knew to jump in and climb out, to interact with another otter, to keep to herself on the rock. Did she have feelings? Did she like any of the other otters who didn’t return her love? Gosh, I was losing it. But I really did admire her instinctual qualities, that basis and foundation of self that you can totally lose in the midst of emotional turmoil. 

My obsession lasted longer than I care to admit, although in hindsight it was only a few months. And then one day it stopped—I had headed to the zoo again, this time grabbing a lamb gyro on the way, which those things are not easy to eat while walking. I went straight through to the otter paddock again, with determination and assuredness, the kind that I’d seen Trina exhibit as she swam in and out of the little pond. No meandering for her. 

There was no nut cart that day, although I was totally stuffed from the gyro. Not to say I wouldn’t have bought some anyway. I only counted five otters in the paddock, none of which had a pink tag. I thought maybe she was hiding out in the engineered habitat, so I waited a little and still didn’t see her. I glanced at the informational plaque which had been updated to only five otters; Trina’s name was missing. I asked a nearby attendant (which, side note, it’s funny to me how I could tell you all about those otters, but I hardly made a human connection with any of the zoo workers, who frankly, I should’ve gotten to know by that point) who told me that Trina had been moved to the Streamville Zoo for breeding purposes.

What if I were to tell you that I immediately collapsed into the attendant’s arms, and he consoled me and said, “I know. I loved her just as much as you did. And I love you too.” And then we married and I moved into his zookeeper’s cottage with him and enjoyed a life researching otters, and that eventually I adopted Trina as my own and told her everyday how she saved my life and led me to Sexy Zoo Attendant. 

I’m not going to tell you that. That’s magical meandering, the thing my mind does because it wants to create opportunities for escape. That isn’t what Trina would do. She would embrace reality. She wouldn’t meander. She’d know she’d want to swim in the pond, so she’d jump in, and there’d be no magic about it. Only determination and purpose and intentional enjoyment as she lived her life.

The next day, my coworker, the one who likes man buns, asked me to go get a latte with her at Ray’s Used Books during our lunch break. So I said yes. Immediately and with assuredness. No mulling it over. I knew I wanted to go, so I grabbed my coat and headed out the door with her. Don’t think I never visited the zoo again. I did and still do occasionally, although more like once a month, and mostly for the sake of needing some more sweet roasted cashews.