THE OTTER. 



NATURE, children, as you observe, 

 gave my family a handsome 

 coat. Now. no bird can have 

 fine feathers, nor beast a fine fur 

 but men and women desire them for 

 adornment, or possibly to keep them- 

 selves warm. So the hunters, finding it 

 a paying business, shoot and trap us till 

 places which once knew the Otter 

 know us no more. 



Such gentle animals as we are, too. 

 No little girl or boy would care to have 

 a more frolicsome playmate than a 

 young cub Otter. He will romp with 

 you, and play with Dog or Cat and sit up 

 on his hindquarters, and whistle and do 

 even many quaint tricks to make you 

 laugh. 



To make him happy you must have 

 a little pond in the yard or a large 

 tank, though he will run about the 

 yard or house most of the time with 

 the Dog. Feed him at first on bread 

 and milk, then on fish, though you can 

 train him to do without the latter and 

 eat the "leavings" from the table. 



Such fun as we Otters that live in 

 the Northern part of the United States 

 and Canada do have in winter. No 

 school-boy enjoys coasting down hill 

 more than we do. Though we live in 

 the water, you may say, and are known 

 as the fastest-swimming quadrupeds, 

 yet, in spite of our short legs, we can 

 run over land tolerably well, too. So 

 we trudge along till we come to a high 



hill, well covered with snow; up we 

 scramble to the top, lie down flat on 

 our smooth jackets, bend our fore feet 

 backward and, giving ourselves a shove 

 with our hind legs, down we slide head- 

 foremost. Such fun as it is! Not till 

 we get hungry or too tired to jog up 

 the hill any more do we give it up for 

 that day. 



In summer we enjoythe same sport, 

 too. How? Oh, all we want is a clay- 

 bank with a good muddy surface, and 

 down we go to turn a somersault into 

 the water of the creek below. "Shoot- 

 ing the chutes" you little people would 

 call it, I suppose, though we call it our 

 "slide." 



Our homes are always on the banks 

 of a stream. We begin to burrow three 

 or four feet below the surface of the 

 water, forming a tunnel which leads to 

 a chamber in the bank high and dry. 

 That is called our den and we line it 

 with grass and live very comfortably. 



Being a hunted animal our senses are 

 very acute. When on land we are 

 always on the alert and, at the approach 

 of danger, down we go into the water 

 and hide in our dens. After sunset we 

 go out to fish. We beat the surface of 

 the water with our tails and frighten 

 the scaly fellows so that they seek 

 refuge under stones or in holes in the 

 bank. Then we catch our Fish. For 

 a change we eat Crabs, Frogs, and 

 sometimes small birds. 



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