WDL 20 How Otter Learned to Dance Part I

Back in the late 90s a friend and former Utah classmate invited me to be on a panel celebrating Professor Fox's many years as an internationally recognized scholar and teacher.  I was deep in the throws of my first commitment to creative writing and asked if I could do what I wanted on the panel.  She said yes.  So I wrote a highly academic introduction of about 600 words with thirty endnotes and attached it to the following story.  I'll take the next three nights to share the story as part of my "20 Working Days Left"

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How Otter Learned to Dance

Once upon a time in the foothills of the Wasatch Range in Utah, there was a community of learned animals.  These animals were charged with analyzing the way their fellows shared meaning with each other.  Bipeds and quadrupeds came from miles around to work with the wise minds in this colony.

Among the brightest of the mammals was a powerful gray cougar.  The color of his heavy coat was not a sign that he was old, as he would be the first to tell you.  but neither was Cougar a spring kitten, though he could run rings around the younger cats, bears and wolves.  He was simply in his prime.

Cougar was a cat of many talents.  He could concentrate so intensely that rabbits, rockchucks, and ferrets could run by him and get not a sniff.  But when roused, no one was a better hunter.  He could climb nimbly, leap over twenty feet in a ingle bound, and stop and turn so suddenly you’d swear he weighed less than two hundred pounds.  But that’s what he weighed, if not a bit more.  He was a big cat. 

Strangely enough, Cougar himself didn’t always remember how much heavy muscle packed his soft pelt.  Sometimes, when he looked into the mirrored surface of a mountain pool, he saw not the face of the forest’s most fearsome predator, but the snout of Coyote, the trickster.  Then he would go off to play.  This caused no problems for his buddies the bears and wolves.  But a friendly cougar who thinks that it weighs the same as a forty-pound coyote can be a handful if you’re merely a bobcat.

And a playful cougar is an even bigger challenge if you’re an otter.  At the time of my story there was an otter living among the learned.  She had traveled south from her home on a tributary of the Snake River.  She wanted to grow, become self-actualized and self-sufficient, so she went to live among the learned animals in Utah:  these included many wild creatures of forest and plains, but only one other otter.  among these beasts she sought to understand the ways of the wise, so that she too could go forth and transmit learning.  That was her task.  But, after two years, it wasn’t working out.

She did not fit in.  She would search for sunlight peaking through the valley fog and sigh, “Ah, me.  They don’t play enough here.  They’re too fierce and serious.  If only I’d never left the Snake River.  If only my friends were here.  If only I could play a game of tag.    Or nose-biting.  Or dip deep devil diving.  Ah, me.”

For two years she lived as an outsider with one friend who understood her fears and delights.  Then one day, her friend, the only other otter, disappeared.  That did it.  Her learning task was no longer compelling.  It was too hard to do alone.  She was convinced she would have to leave.  But she wasn’t sure.  She was confused.  So one night, as she curled up in her burrow, she said a prayer to The Powers That Be for an answer to her question:  should she continue in this strange place or should she give up and go home? 

That’s when Otter’s totem human appeared to her.  (You know, humans have totem animals so it’s only fair that animals have totem humans.) 

As the fog cleared from her vision, Otter saw a small man with outrageous eyebrows and a shiny suit seated at a computer terminal.  She just stared.

“Hey, wake up, bubalah.  You had a question?”

“You’re my Spirit Guide?” Otter asked in amazement.

“You were expecting maybe Chief Seattle?  Yes, I’m your guide.  And the guide of about a thousand other mammals.  You should see my Filofax.  Oy Vey.  So, I haven’t got all night.  I’ve got to get to, hmmmm, let’s see . . .” the Spirit Guide tapped the keys and stared at the screen.  “California.  There’s a penguin who’s wondering what it’s doing in San Diego.”

“Well, oh Spirit Guide,” Otter intoned.

“Jackie.  Call me Jackie.  Jackie is fine.”

“Well, Spirit Guide Jackie.  I’m wondering if I should stay here in the mountains of Utah and finish my studies or go back home to the Snake River?”

“And you are .. . .?”

“Otter?”

“OK. OK.”  He tapped the keys.  “Otter in Utah, Otter in Utah.  Nope.  Nothing for you there.  But I do have another answer.  But it’s to a different question.  Do you want to guess what the question is?”

Otter was distraught.  She started to cry.  The tears rolled off her slick fur and began making the floor of her furrow salty.   The Spirit Guide looked at his Timex.

To be continued . . .