THE OTTER. 127 



instantly. The disturbance, then, had been caused 

 by her mate, who, refusing to leave her dead body, 

 had shown his grief in the manner described 

 perhaps with the thought of keeping any intruder 

 from the spot till she came round. 



If a bitch-otter is hunted by hounds when she 

 has cubs, she will not leave the vicinity of her 

 holt, though in all probability the youngsters are 

 gobbled up by the hounds early in the proceedings. 

 I remember an incident of this kind when a bitch- 

 otter tried every trick she knew to save her own 

 life and that of her kit's, keeping the hounds busy 

 for over an hour about the same fifty yards of river. 

 During the hunt I saw a big hound chewing up 

 something, which, by its tail, was unmistakably 

 an otter kit, and in the end the poor dam, quite 

 unconscious, floated to the surface like a wet rag, 

 to be snapped up by the nearest hound and 

 killed without so much as a kick. 



Before she gave in this otter played every 

 trick known to her kind, and so well known to 

 every M.O.H. On one occasion she lay for ten 

 minutes under a thick scum of decayed reeds, only 

 her nostrils protruding through the scum, while 

 she herself was invisible beneath it. On another 

 occasion she rose under a bush which overhung 

 the water, and from the submerged branches of 

 which long streamers of weed and drift moved 

 with the current. She lay among these streamers, 

 moving in the same limp manner as they were 

 moved, and practically indistinguishable among 

 them. At times whole parties of men and women 

 stood within six feet of her, eagerly searching the 

 water ; but it was some minutes ere one sportsman, 

 more experienced than the rest, realised that that 

 dark, drifting thing was not a weed, but an otter ! 



