Otters!

[alonewiththemoon]

There are otters (and fishers and two species of fox and deer and coyotes and skunks and other critters) living in the Alewife Reservation!  That is so exciting!  Link to January 2008 wildlife survey.  I really should invest in some hiking through the woods clothes and spend some time over there...

Comments

[shnells.livejournal.com]

i'd join you for that!

[alonewiththemoon]

Yay! We'll have to wait until spring, I think, until things are less soggy, but the various animals should be more active then anyway :)

[kambriel.livejournal.com]

Awwww!!!

We took a video of some otters in Monterey.

Get this. One of them was sucking it's paw while sleeping.

I just don't even have the words for that level of cute.

[alonewiththemoon]

I think mustelids have a special cute gene. It's the only way to explain it.

[peregrinekt.livejournal.com]

someone caught a fisher not too far away from here in a coyote trap, so I think its only a matter of time before i see one in my yard.
we see mink from our office and once an otter (which was rather amazing, at the time but not too surprising really...)

[alonewiththemoon]

Mustelids are really pretty fearless*, so if they can find food, they will move in. The Alewife Reservation link I had in the original journal entry mentioned that fishers have shifted from eating various small critters to specializing in squirrels, of which suburban neighborhoods tend to have plenty. The especially cool thing about otters making a comeback is that it means the waterways really are significantly cleaner than they used to be.

*when I was in Alaska, two river otters yelled at me for walking on their pathway. I yielded; apart from the possibility that they might have bitten me, they were too adorable not to oblige ;-)

[frankensplean.livejournal.com]

This is quite interesting to me as it is my neck of the woods nowadays. :)