'Neither fish nor flesh'

A creature of bewitching contrasts, the otter is 'an animal that might have been specifically designed to please a child' and has captured our imaginations since first we encountered its bright-eyed gaze, says Laura Parker

- Laura Parker

A BRONZE otter sits on a wall in Bideford, Devon, holding a fish under its webbed paw. Behind it, the River Torridge flows quietly beneath a long medieval bridge. More than 400 miles to the north, another sculpted otter stands proud and alert, looking down over the Galloway coast.

The books that inspired these monuments, Tarka the Otter by Henry Williamson and Gavin Maxwell's Ring of Bright Water, respectively, made otter-lovers of several generations. The two very different works, one written in 1927 and the other in 1960-both still in print-together with their spin-off films, imprinted otters onto our collective consciousness. They also undoubtedly motivated some of the passionate conservationists who helped the animals recover from perilously low numbers in the late 20th century to their current, much healthier population.

Otters have always been with us. A species older than humans by several million years, Lutra lutra swims through our mythology. Otters appeared in Celtic and Norse myths as friendly, helpful creatures. The romantic Scottish island of Eilean Donan was named after an otter king who saved a selkiea shape-shifting seal woman-from a man with bad intentions. They are in Christian legend, too. Two otters obligingly dried the feet of the 7th-century St Cuthbert after he waded into the sea to pray. He became their patron saint and is often depicted with the furry pair at his feet.

They have a strange power to haunt writers’ imaginations. The Wind in the Willows takes a turn for trippiness when Portly, the cheerful Otter’s missing son, is discovered under the protection of the god Pan. Hermione, of ‘Harry Potter’ fame, has an otter for her patronus or magic guardian. Ted Hughes claimed that