This was otterly horrible!
Day in the life of a renegade otter:
• Attack kayakers
• Pursue kayakers and attacks again
• Get into fights w/ alligators
• Is BOSS of the riverhttps://t.co/jhY9hHrqn7— Scott Pollenz (@spollenz) March 7, 2018
From The Tampa Bay Times:
For Marsha Wikle, it should have been a typical Sunday afternoon, paddling downstream along the Braden River in Manatee County.
Wikle said she was taking in the sights, leading a kayaking excursion in a “very quiet section” of the river, when they encountered something familiar to many visiting Florida’s freshwater areas: a river otter.
But this was no ordinary otter.
The rogue — and possibly rabid — animal attacked a 77-year-old Sarasota woman. It also menaced the kayakers as they attempted to make their way on shore. And that wasn’t the only otter attack reported this weekend on the river, which is east of Interstate 75.
The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission is investigating a second attack in which two individuals were bitten by an otter the day before, on Saturday, two miles from Wikle’s encounter.
The otter also was reported to be chasing boats and acting aggressive, according to FWC.
Witnesses also told FWC that an otter also came into contact with an alligator after the attacks on Sunday and suffered injuries.
FWC spokeswoman Melody Kilborn said a search for the otter is ongoing. Agency employees also have placed flyers at two boat ramps along the river to warn visitors of the aggressive otter.
River otter attacks are rare, Kilborn said, and no such attacks were reported last year.
Samantha Wisely, an associate professor at the University of Florida’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences, said the animal’s behavior makes rabies the most likely cause of its aggression.
“Its behavior strongly suggests it was rabid,” Wisely said. “Healthy otters would never attack people.”
Mike Terrell, director of husbandry for the Florida Aquarium, warned boaters to practice caution when seeing animals in the wild.
Given that it is still technically winter, it could be a Kushtaka, the Alaskan Otterman, down in Florida for the winter as a snowbird:
The Tlingit and Tsimshian peoples, indigenous inhabitants of the Pacific Northwest Coast of the United States and Southeastern Alaska, have a robust folklore surrounding a mythical and maniacal trickster race called the Kushtaka, which roughly translates as “land otter people”, a shape-shifting species of otter that is rumored to spend a lot of its time trying to lure unsuspecting humans away from their homes in order to turn them into more Kushtaka (which in Tlingit folklore basically amounts to preventing us from achieving reincarnation and consequent everlasting life). Sometimes they don’t bother, and simply tear a victim to shreds. Not cool. Bad otter.
Stay frosty! And DON’T feed the otters!
Open thread.
JCJ
Yikes!
In other animal news there has been a cougar in my leafy suburb outside of Milwaukee. Someone caught it on a surveillance video looking in their picture window.
Adam L Silverman
@JCJ: Wearing a tight, short skirt, stiletto heels, big spangly earrings?//
Sab
We have been reduced to laughing at elderly women bitten by rabid otters. Sigh.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
That’s what I wondered about when I heard this story. Rabies, or Silverman was training attack otters
So next up is rabid gators? (can reptiles get rabies?)
Adam L Silverman
@Sab: I’m not laughing at the elderly woman. I’m laughing at the rabid otter.
Wag
@Sab:
Isn’t it a nice respite from having to laugh at Trump’s antics?
Adam L Silverman
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I can neither confirm nor deny this at this time.
Wag
If the otter suffered injuries, I would assume that the alligator did as well. Does anyone have any idea whether alligators are susceptible to rabies? A rabid alligator would be a nightmare scenario in my book.
Corner Stone
This seems like a silly gag post. With all that’s going on, don’t you have some otter important topic to write about?
Sab
@Adam L Silverman: You are also a Florida man, aren’t you?
smintheus
Jimmy Carter’s re-election was badly undermined when he was attacked while
canoeingfishing by a rabid rabbit. The news media took their cues from Republicans and mocked Carter for being weak and feckless…for fending off a rabid animal. The making of this national political miasma began decades ago. We shouldn’t forget how long our media has been more or less this pathetic.Edited for truth.
Wag
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Great minds think alike. And so do we.
Corner Stone
@Wag: My money’s on the gator.
Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD)
“Gentlemen, to evil.”
Sandia Blanca
Grabbing this as an opportunity to plug the Jilkaat Kwaan Cultural Heritage & Bald Eagle Preserve Visitor Center in Klukwan, Alaska, where you can see and learn all about the Tlingit totems and other traditions. Well worth a side trip if you’re ever in Haines, Alaska.
debbie
@Wag:
I can’t imagine the otter would have punctured the alligator’s skin, and if the alligator had bit the otter, it likely wouldn’t have survived.
Adam L Silverman
@Sab: I was born in Florida. Grew up in Florida.
Sab
@Wag: Isn’t rabies limited to mammals. Amphibians and reptiles are blessedly immune.
Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD)
@smintheus: Was it conclusively rabid, or just an asshole?
Corner Stone
@JCJ:
Let me know if I can give you my number to slip to her one day.
Sab
@Wag: Yes it is. I have been lurking all day because I can’t bear to think about, much less comment about him. The front pagers are tougher folks than I am.
smintheus
@Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD): A rabbit hissing, gnashing its teeth, and swimming out to attack a fishing boat…hmmm.
Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD)
@Sab: I read somewhere that birds can survive contracting the disease, and that at any rate its (apparently) not being universally fatal in the wild has gone unstudied. (The only documented case of an untreated rabies patient surviving was last decade, with the “Texas Wild Child.”)
Amir Khalid
Espcially if it’s you they want to eat!
Shell
Remembering a PBS Nature program, the otters are really sized BIG down in Florida.
Sab
@Adam L Silverman: I only went to elementary school there, half a century ago. Still had a large impact, but I never saw a river otter. Only porpoises and sea cows. Never heard of them rabid. Nor the alligators. The wild hogs were rare but terrifying. I loved our neighborhood indigo snake who scared off all the rattlers. And clapper rail birds were very cool.
Doug R
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
How could someone tell? Don’t gators act the same no matter what?
Corner Stone
@Sab:
How would one tell the difference between a gator and a rabid gator?
Mike J
There was a renegade otter at America lake just south of Tacoma last year? Two years ago?
And of course my standard complain about them being poop machines.
Gin & Tonic
I was surprised to find that otters are found natively in New England.
Doug R
@smintheus:
https://orig00.deviantart.net/d178/f/2011/123/1/5/killer_rabbit_gif_by_renjikuchiki1-d3fjdsm.gif
p.a.
Pay per view, Florida otter vs Jimmy Carter’s rabbit!
Corner Stone
@Gin & Tonic: Shouldn’t hookers have you bound by about now? Make sure there’s a safe word, and you didn’t pay them up front.
NotMax
@Corner Stone
Lighten up and turn the otter cheek.
:)
NotMax
@Corner Stone
Hydrophobia can really cramp a gator’s lifestyle.
Just sayin’.
;)
Sab
@Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD): That’s intetesting about birds. If I remember correctly, two American human children have survived rabies. One was a little boy who had previously been innoculated. The more recent case was a teenage girl who was put into a long induced coma.
p.a.
@Gin & Tonic:
ETA: the “s are from the article, not me snarking.
JCJ
@Adam L Silverman: @Corner Stone:
Here ya go
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxWQkTF-4Pc
Corner Stone
@Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD):
I’m sorry. You were saying?
Omnes Omnibus
@JCJ: Did the Milwaukee lion go suburban? That disappoints me so.
Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD)
@Corner Stone: She was actually from Missouri, and I don’t think there was any follow-up on her condition.
Corner Stone
@JCJ: Oh, man. She is totally hot! You can tell by the way she almost attacks the image of herself in the glass reflection that she’s just looking for someone who gets her. I am totally there for her.
SWMBO
@Corner Stone: A regular gator just cheers in the stand. A rabid one bites the other teams players. I’ll show myself out now.
Gin & Tonic
@p.a.: That’s the first time I’ve seen “pickles and buns” used that way, but I think I know what she means.
I saw a river otter near me one time, when I was walking the dog. There’s a handful of freshwater wetlands.
Betty Cracker
From what I’m reading on Twitter, Trump gave a really bonkers speech at a rally for the nonentity Conor Lamb will hopefully defeat on Tuesday. Made racist remarks, bellowed absurd claims, shouted bloodthirsty remarks, etc. The candidate got short shrift, from the accounts I’ve read. Trump made it all about himself as usual. ?
Gin & Tonic
@Corner Stone: Mmmpphh.
Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD)
@Sab: Apparently abortive rabies happens all the time in animals, but almost never in humans. At any rate it’s one of the worst ways to go.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
in other Stormy news…
Sab
@Betty Cracker: My 93 year old dad with somewhat severe dementia loved it, until at some point Trump lost his interest, so he turned the TV off and went to bed.
He won’t be voting in May or November, because no one has any intention of helping him to the polls. A week or two later he will ask about the election and we will tell him he already voted.Hope that isn’t illegal.
Corner Stone
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I, for one, would welcome a set amount of “executive time” each day for President Stormy Daniels.
JCJ
@Omnes Omnibus:
Well, the Milwaukee Lion of 2017 was seen at 41st and Capitol. This video was from around 135th Street a little north of Capitol. Maybe he was just passing through on the way to his old stomping grounds.
A few years a go there was a bear in Wauwatosa at 114th and Burleigh in a business park
Corner Stone
I haven’t spoken to one of my lifelong RWNJ friends in two years or so. He used to literally, no bullshit, carry around a pocket sized version of the Constitution with him everywhere during the Bill Clinton sexcapades. I honestly wonder what he’s thinking now but at the same time have been unable to ring him up to find out.
Rule of Law! Rule of Law! Rule of Law!
Omnes Omnibus
@JCJ:Cool. I was concerned.
Omnes Omnibus
@Omnes Omnibus: Troll.
Corner Stone
@Omnes Omnibus:
You ain’t never lied.
trollhattan
Seems a rather shellfish attitude.
RepubAnon
Sean Hannity will undoubtedly report that the otter is a registered Democrat…
Patricia Kayden
@Sab: I’m not laughing at all. That’s sounds beyond scary.
Corner Stone
@trollhattan: If you want to shellfishly hold down the attacks, what otter way to go is there?
Patricia Kayden
@Betty Cracker: This is how Trump behaves all the time. Everything is about him. There will be no pivot.
FlyingToaster
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Sadly, no.
LaNonna
We saw Black Panther while here in Cape Town, what a great experience. Choice of 2 or 3D, good chairs and sound system ( you can tell we don’t get out to the movie theater in rural Puglia, because there isn’t one), loved the film. Just beautiful and satisfying.
Water the BIG issue, drove out to look at the reservoir and it is dire, at least 5 years of steady seasonal rains to refill it. Doing our bit, along with our Capetonian friends, less laundry, hand sanitizer, baby wipes instead of daily showers, refilling bottles with recycled ozone water, etc.
Ninedragonspot
Baud! / Otter! 2020
Slogan: “Not Without My Otter!”
Patricia Kayden
@smintheus: So which rabid animal is going to take on Trump? His kids love to pose with dead animals so it would be karma.
Sab
@Patricia Kayden: Apparently if you get shots promptly you will probably be OK. Still strikes me as scary rather than funny. But I am closer to 79 than to 40. Us olds have no sense of humor. How big are river otter teeth? I have never seen one.
Ninedragonspot
Looking forward to tomorrow’s installment: “Welcome Back, Otter”.
smintheus
@Patricia Kayden: All of them, Kaytie!
Sab
@LaNonna: Praying for gentle rain for you all.
GxB
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Well she’d be a poor Republican in the current environment anyway. Speculating here but Ryan, McConnell, and all the other misanthropic shitheads have probably rubbed out quite a few above their average over the past year or so.
You can thank me for that mental image by not interacting with the new “schtick” troll about. Something about him/her seems awfully familiar and I’m certain they’re an old, oft banned moran trying a new, and admittedly novel, approach.
Sab
I am still hoping for a front page open thread Black Panther sometime when many jackals have finaly dragged themselves to the theater to see it ( waiting for the grammer purists.)
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Sab: My dad got bit by a dog when he was a kid and had to get those shots, this was back in the 1920’s.
James E. Powell
@LaNonna:
I saw it this afternoon. It was a sound system called Titan Luxe and it was pretty good. They ran a demo of it before the film started with a variety of sounds. If I could get the surround sound rainfall in my bedroom I might have a cure for my chronic insomnia.
The film was as good as everyone said it was. I always wait to see the big ones because I don’t like crowded theaters. Apparently I should have waited a bit longer. The theater was full.
ShadeTail
Rabid? Naw. He just got a shot of night howler serum.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_6BfT2dV2w
NotMax
@James E. Powell
Amazon Prime offers multiple, multi-hour selections of rainfall sounds. With ultra-black screen, so it appears your TV is off.
Corner Stone
@Sab:
It just barely cracked a $1B in ticket sales! Give us some space, for Wakanda sake!
Jay
@Sab:
Depends on the species of otter and where. Here, River Otter’s have half in canines, Florida, probably an inch, ( dog sized), Brazil, Giant River Otters, 3 to 4 inches.
Ken
@Adam L Silverman:
IIRC, this is military for “Why yes, yes I am.”
Sab
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Yikes. I have been bit by several dogs but they all had their shots.
Years ago cats didn’t need to get shots but dogs did. Always struck me as weird. My dog doesn’t run loose but if he bit me I’d ask “what’s wrong with you? ” My cat runs wild and eats rodents and fights with every other wild animal out there, and when he bites me I say ” he’s just being a cat”.
Ken
@Corner Stone:
And would it be any more dangerous than telling the difference between a crocodile and an alligator?
(Something to do with the way one of its many teeth is positioned. I’m not sure of the details because what’s the point, I’m never getting that close to either. It’s like that poem for coral versus king snake – black on red you’re dead, red on yellow kill a fellow, whatever; I’m not planning to pick one up.)
Sab
@Jay: Yikes about Brazil rivers. Also piranhas elsewhere. Scary rivers there.
NotMax
@Corner Stone
Link is not fully up to date; extrapolating from there, the worldwide gross would place it somewhere in the 30s on the list of box office grosses.
Adjusting for inflation, by now somewhere in the mid-fifities, domestically.
Sab
@Ken: when I was a kid in Florida, neighbors killed off a king snake in their bomb shelter. Aside from being a useless killiing of a harmless snake, kingsnakes also run off rattlers. So their ignorance made their shelter more dangeroua. Idiots.
? Martin
I think I know why I like the Paralympics better than the Olympics – the commentary is better and the athlete profiles are more informational rather than trying to build drama.
Ken
@Sab: Brazil rivers are nothing compared to Brazil nuts. Those things can kill you dead.
(That wedge shape is because there’s two dozen of them packed like an orange, inside a cannonball-sized four-pound seed pod that grows, and falls from, a hundred feet or more in the air.)
NotMax
@Ken
Like the peanut, the walnut and the cashew they aren’t true nuts either.
Trivia: Most Brazil nuts come from Bolivia.
CaseyL
@Ken:
A nut tree that can kill you? OK, Brazil is South America’s answer to Australia.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Ken: they also take up room in the mixed nut can that could be taken up by good nuts
also, too
Corner Stone
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
So true. I hate getting the mixed nuts bowl on an airplane and find it to be 50%+ Brazil nuts.
Sab
@Ken: Wow. So like a machine gun version of cashews. We never see cashews with shells in the store because they ate related to poison ivy, and you need hazmat suits to peel them.
So brazil nuts in their native environment are explosive.I think I’ll stick to pecans and walnuts..
NotMax
@Jim, Foolish Literalist
Would be more than happy to snap up the Brazil nuts and the filberts; you’re welcome to the rest of the can.
;)
Sab
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I like brazil nuts, except they are so hard to peel.
NotMax
@Sab
And whence did cashews originate?
Brazil.
Workers who shell cashews in Goa on the Indian sub-continent suffer much because they are not provided protective gear and cannot afford to purchase it on their own.
Sab
@NotMax: I think I didn’t need to know that, which means that I absolutely did need to know that.
jl
I think raw Brazil nuts are great, much more, and better, flavor, than roasted. Which is the opposite of any other nut I can think of. I don’t know why anyone bothers to roast them. Any Brazil nut skeptics should try a bag or raw ones.
Adam L Silverman
@JCJ: It isn’t moving like its injured.
Adam L Silverman
@Ken:
I can neither confirm nor deny this either at this time.
Adam L Silverman
@Ken: The shape of the heads and snouts are a bit different as well.
Matt McIrvin
@Ken: If I recall correctly, Brazil nuts also accumulate selenium and radium to the point that it’s probably not safe to eat more than few of them a day–the latter makes them one of the most radioactive foods you can buy.
Ken
@Matt McIrvin: I thought that was triffids.
? Martin
@Sab: I missed my calling. I’m not allergic to poison ivy. My stepfather is wickedly allergic – he’d break out if the pollen blew past him from a plant 100 meters away. So, my job would be to go in the forest behind our house and rip out all of the poison ivy I could find. The first year I did it I went through an entire box of large trash bags. But I can handle it bare handed, rub my face after, etc. Never broke out. But put me near a cat – I’ll practically stop breathing.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Adam L Silverman: You might very well think that. I couldn’t possibly comment.
Ken
@Adam L Silverman: For some reason, now I’m remembering Wild Kingdom. Each episode Marlin Perkins would explain some fascinating fact about that week’s animal, then they’d cut to the safari footage. Invariably Marlin was in the vehicle filming, while his assistant was the one out looking for cobras in the tall grass or taking the rectal temperature of a hyena.
? Martin
BTW, the US is really good at creating paralympians. Among the male athletes, seems like most of them are here thanks to an IED.
Jay
@Sab:
River Otters are cute, and they are a keystone species. They were hunted to extinction in most of the world, for their fur, only a few species survived.
Having fished all my life, I like otters.
Adam L Silverman
@Ken: There’s Marlin Perkins and then there’s the help.
Corner Stone
@Jay:
That’s interesting.
Origuy
@? Martin:
Neither am I, but I’m still careful. I know of people who didn’t react at all to poison oak or ivy, until they got exposed in just the right way. Then they got a nasty surprise.
Then I’ve known other people who got a rash from cheap lacquer. Japanese lacquer is made from the urushi tree, which is related to poison oak and ivy. The active allergen is called urushinol. If it’s not done right, there’s some of the allergen left in the lacquer.
PsiFighter37
So what’s the over/under on PA-18?
Librarian
@Ken: Johnny Carson loved to joke about that all the time.
Adam L Silverman
@PsiFighter37: Based on the coverage I’ve read on the President’s rally, I have no idea. If the polling is correct that it is essentially within the margin of error, anything could happen. The question is going to be whether the President’s appearance tonight motivates more people to turn out for Saccone that would’ve been staying home as a positive reaction to the President and his remarks or more people to turn out for Lamb as a negative reaction to the President and his remarks at the rally.
JCJ
@Adam L Silverman:
Yeah, the kitty looks rather hale and hearty.
Mnemosyne
@Jay:
The LA Zoo has giant river otters. They’re really fun to watch, but obviously getting into an enclosure with a predator that’s the size of a labrador retriever would be a really bad idea.
NotMax
@Ken
“While Jim runs from the charging rhino, it’s a good time to remind you that Mutual of Omaha offers you shelter wherever you are.”
Steeplejack (phone)
First after the time change?
Steeplejack (phone)
Problem with comments apparently fixed.
Sm*t Cl*de
@Wag:
Nope. I know this because of
mad scientist experimentsreasons.Birds can contract rabies but can’t spread it because of having no salivary glands.
Since birds= dinosaurs I guess rabid velociraptors are possible.
@Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD):
Bats seem to survive with rabies quite happily, and become carriers.
lowtechcyclist
TIM THE ENCHANTER: This is no ordinary otter…that’s the most foul, cruel, and bad-tempered rodent you ever set eyes on! Look, that otter’s got a vicious streak a mile wide! It’s a killer!
Brachiator
People otter know better than to mess with these creatures.
(((CassandraLeo)))
@lowtechcyclist: I warned you! I warned you, but did you listen to me? No, you knew it all, didn’t you? It’s just a harmless little otter, isn’t it? Well, it’s always the same. I always tell them. Do they listen to me?
evodevo
@smintheus: Yes. At the time, I didn’t laugh… swamp rabbits are larger and more aggressive than their bunny counterparts in the suburbs AND rabbits can bite the crap out of you, and it’s quite likely it wasn’t even rabid … just pissed off, OR escaping a gator. city people have NO idea …
maeve
I saw a Tlingit version of MacBeth and the witches were Kushtaka. They can be seen in this clip https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=75xU23eiNug The theater group is from Juneau but I saw it in Sitka, Alaska.
SWMBO
@Ken: Marlin would be in the studio with a cute Orangatan or something. “Does your Orangatan burn? Then you need Mutual of Omaha’s fire policy!” He would be the one in the vehicle “Jim, go circumcise that polar bear!” Marlin was more the adventurous spectator.