ANOTHER LIFE: It’s an age since I saw an otter. On sorties to the strand, somewhat rarer now, I check a tuft of grass at the freshwater pool where a stream runs out to the channel. Green and lush from repeated doses of nitrogen, it bears the remains of the latest spraint, the otter’s dropping; a tarry morsel with a musky, not displeasing scent. And then, walking the tideline, I watch for the track of an otter, bringing its fish – small and flat, mostly, from these sandy shallows – across to the dunes to chew among the marram. Or else, where the strand meets a rocky headland, tracks where an otter cuts up through a cleft in the dunes to a little marshy lake, there to rinse the sea salt from its fur…
Irish Times, 28/01/13. Read the full article ‘Where otters dare, all is right with the natural world‘.
