I was high on a rock beside the beaver dam from where I had often watched beavers gnaw on wood along the dam, oblivious to me. I'm not sure why I didn't fool the otters that day. It's possible that they wanted to go across the dam and made a particular effort to scan the neighboring high ground for possible predators (as we'll see when we get to the winter, otters have a keen sense of the high ground.)

I was also taken aback by how each individual otter, three of them pups, looked askance and expressed displeasure with me being in their way. But I think I can see three, the pups, that are not quite convincing. I didn't feel bad sending them swimming up pond because there were two more large ponds up that way.

Usually, gentle though I am, when the otters discover me they go hide. But not this day. I think the mother was out to teach them a lesson, and she did. I came upon these otters again in another pond with the wind in my face. I could see them but they couldn't smell me. As they moved along I kept the wind between us. They went up on a beaver lodge to groom and rest and I went up on some rocks to watch them.

We were not alone for long. A group of second graders led by a park naturalist and surrounded by teachers and parents came down the trail to the pond. What would the otters do? They could surely hear their childish chattering and then the loud lecture. Well, the pups perked up from their nest on the lodge and looked at the kids, studied the students.

Then one of the otters swam off, the mother, I'm pretty sure. And as I interpret the situation, the otter pups found themselves without their mother, in the presence of people. And they seemed to do as previously taught: they went into the pond and swam under water to the safety of another den site in the pond, right at the bottom of the rocks where I was. It seems my presence caused the lesson to go awry, and mother had a momentary panic as she tried to round up the confused pups. Turn the page: page28