Zimmerman, MN. U.S.A.
I was close to finishing my morning as a volunteer Roving Wildlife Interpreter at Sherburne National Wildlife Refuge. As I rounded the bend to the last section of the Wildlife Drive, near the Stickney Pool eagle nest, I saw a small brown animal form lying in the middle of the road ahead. My first thought was “muskrat” for it seemed about the right size and color. My second thought was that it had been run over by one of the visitors who passed me on the Drive during the morning. That was difficult to believe because all the visitors on the drive this morning had been traveling slowly, looking intently for wildlife. People who enjoy nature that much don’t run over animals.
Instinctively I pulled onto the verge and hopped out of the truck intending to get the dead muskrat off the road. Then I got a surprise. I wasn’t dealing with the carcass of a muskrat but of a young river otter. It’s not too unusual for muskrats to get run over on the highways of our marshy area, but I have never seen an otter, young or adult, killed on a roadway. Or anywhere else for that matter.
The young otter was lying on its stomach in an otherwise normal position. The fur was dry except for a few wet spots on the back. There was sand, probably from the road, clinging to the fur of the back. The carcass seemed to be completely intact with no indication that it had been run over. I picked it up and turned it over. There was no visible sign of what had killed it. The body was still soft as though it had not been dead very long.
I carried the dead otter to the roadside and laid it at the edge of the grass where it would be safe from passing cars. As I did I thought “Wow. If we can get the body to a taxidermist before it spoils it will make a wonderful exhibit for our visitor center.”
Dead young otter after it was moved off the Wildlife Drive.
I stood up, looked around for a few landmarks to pinpoint the location of the carcass, then snapped a picture of the otter for no particular reason. As I made my scan of the area I noticed an adult bald eagle perched in a dead tree about thirty-five feet behind me.
This was a piece of luck for sure, a photo op with an eagle that wasn’t the usual quarter mile away. I had my camera in hand. I figured if I moved slowly I could easily snap a picture before the bird flew.
But the eagle didn’t seem to be concerned about my presence. In fact seemed curious about me. So I took my time, walked down the road a bit to get a better angle and experimented with a few camera settings. The picture below gave me the satisfaction of feeling I had a good portrait of the curious eagle.
Picture from a lucky close-up photo shoot with a bald eagle.
When I got back to the truck I called Lizzy Berkley, the refuge biologist, and told her about the otter carcass and shared my thought that it might be useful in an educational exhibit. She was unable to come out to retrieve it just then but said she would have somebody pick it up.
When I checked in the next day to see how things worked out I learned that someone had indeed gone out to retrieve the little otter. But the otter was gone when they got there. Lizzy figured a coyote or some other animal probably made a meal of it.
Then came the great “Aha!” Mystery solved! I knew how the otter died. That eagle hadn't been hanging around because it wanted to be in a photo shoot. It hadn’t been at all curious about what I was doing with my camera. It had been curious about what I was doing with its lunch.
Suddenly I had a complete picture of the otter's last moments. In my mind's eye I saw it climbing out of Stickney pool to cross the Wildlife Drive. I saw the eagle watching from its aerie on the other side of the pool. For the eagle this was like having pizza delivered to the front door.
I imagined the eagle swooping down and almost felt the impact of those sharp grasping talons as they ended the otters life in a merciful instant. The eagle probably didn't get a good grip. The body rolled over from the impact so that sand from the road stuck to the wet fur on its back. And then as the eagle struggled to get the kill airborne a truck with a guy with a camera came round the bend. What better to do than fly up to the top of a nearby tree, there to wait for the intruder to pass. And when he did not pass but stopped and picked up the near gratuitous meal, it would require some close watching. And the watching was almost palpable. I imagine that when I left the eagle waited a few cautious minutes, then swooped down, reclaimed its meal and flew it home.
Thus ended another chain of natural events at Sherburne refuge: eagle fed; otter population controlled by nature; Roving Interpreter left with a good story and some pictures. A win for two out of the three participants. And two out of three is pretty OK, at least in the natural world.
