02-11-2015 Today’s topic: otters. Specifically, why the otter is my favorite animal.

Much of the appeal comes from my general affection for all creatures small and deceptively deadly. Cute packages wrapped around lethal weaponry are a bit of a Thing for me. Consider that I know practically nothing about Pokemon but love Pikachu with an unreasonable passion. That’s puts a fine point on it.

Otters are hardly the only animal that qualifies. Cats are small and dangerous too (and also beloved of me) and many other animals have those two traits. (goshawks are also high on my list of liking, and little burrowing owls, along with snow leopards and fennecs…but I digress.) There’s more to my love of otters than their being small but dangerous. I feel a unique spiritual similarity with them, for lack of a better phrase.

Let’s pause to look at weasels for a moment. Weasels are vicious and grumpy, they smell bad, they’re insufferably nosy and annoying, and they destroy everything they touch almost as a byproduct of their existence. Hunt, capture, destroy, leave a mess. That’s the weasel manifesto.

Otters are basically water weasels. Scientifically speaking, taxonomically and so on, they’re weasels. They are nature’s worst jerks, but because they clown and goof off and look adorable while they dismember fish and annihilate oysters, their nastiness is overlooked. They have fun even when they’re angry and fighting and very seriously slaughtering things, and so people don’t mind when they growl and grouse and posture defensively.

Otters embody my own traits and hopes better than any other creature. On the worst days, I know myself to be a hateful, nasty weasel. So I yearn to be an otter.

Time: 3:30 PM
Tea: Irish Breakfast
Steeping time: 8 minutes. The spoon is about to melt.

And a picture of otters. LOOK AT THOSE FACES!