Animals in the Wild [ 105 



advantage of man-made ponds. Despite their ingenuity, however, 

 they have never learned to construct their own dams, as beavers do, 



OTTERS SHY Bur LIKABLE 



Few creatures are as wary of man as the otter. Even when 

 your nature trails extend far beyond cities and town, you may 

 fail to catch a glimpse of this attractive animal. But though otters 

 remain unseen, you can still find evidence of their whereabouts 

 by looking closely along the banks of streams and lakes. There 

 will be footprints in the mud that borders their favorite fishing 

 waters. 



Otters Outswim Fish: Otters are remarkably swift and agile in 

 the water: They catch the fish they delight to eat, literally out- 

 swimming them! Yet young otters are anything but "born swim- 

 mers." They live quietly at first, feeding on their mother's milk. 

 When they are old enough she takes them for their first swimming 

 lesson. By way of encouraging a baby she has it climb on her 

 shoulders; then she dives into the water, often swimming with the 

 baby still clinging to her. Lessons may continue throughout the 

 summer until the young otters are as big as cats. Painstaking 

 practice finally turns the pupils into first-class swimmers. 



The Otters' Playful Habits: An otter family keeps together for at 

 least a year, and all its members, parents as well as youngsters, 

 know how to have fun the way boys and girls do. A pastime the 

 otters favor, for example, is for two of them to pull at opposite 

 ends of a stick, tug-of-war fashion. They romp and roll like 

 puppies, clawing up the turf and throwing the clods about. Their 

 greatest fun comes from sliding. They love to chute-the-chute on 

 their stomachs down steep river banks into the water, and will 

 keep this up in one place until it becomes very slippery. In 

 wintertime they toboggan down snow-covered hills. 



MOLES NATURE'S EXCAVATORS 



You do not have to go far afield for evidence of moles. All 

 too often unsightly ridges appear in your garden or lawn which 

 proclaim that these strange, near-blind underground mammals 



