Other worlds

It’s well worth taking a walk along the Dodder Road

at dusk in June. Last night at 9.40 pm a small bright fish leaped out of the water, for a very quick bite. Almost immediately I hoped he was traveling upstream, because along came a very frisky otter, also bent on finding some supper. This sleek animal who must have been an adolescent, gambolled energetically in and out of the shallows, propelled by his powerful tail. He might have been snacking and he ignored me as I watched -enthralled by his bulky at-homeness in the water.

Then a jogger came along and his eye was caught by the river disturbance. This young man, who was hung about with technology, stopped and trained some sort of camera down on the beautiful animal. Immediately the spell was broken. The otter looked up briefly, as if asking indignantly: “What’s with this flashing business?” Then he dived into deep dark water and was no more to be seen.
We two strangers standing at the low river wall, waited for a while. We had shared briefly in a privileged sighting, but were alienated from each other by the young man’s dangling ear-flexes. As we moved off in different directions, he grunted some sort of greeting, which I returned with a shrug. But I felt enriched, knowing that, as Wordsworth would say, the round shiny back of the otter would “…flash upon that inward eye…..”. And happily I walked home to my own supper.