The Otters' Tale by Simon Cooper

Author:Simon Cooper [Cooper, Simon]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2017-02-24T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 9

TO AUTUMN

Equinox

When Keats walked the banks of the River Itchen, near Winchester, close on two hundred years ago, composing his famous poem ‘To Autumn’, he was just the other side of the hill and a handful of miles from the Wallop Brook. In those three stanzas that open with the line ‘Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness’, he captures a countryside that is, in many ways, not so very different today, the progression from the warmth of summer to the impending winter as true today as it was then. It might be tempting to write that the trappings of human progress have taken a fatal toll on his words, but they haven’t. The cottages are still thatched. The poppies still bloom. The full-grown lambs still bleat. Of course, for many of us, more removed from everyday rural life than we might like, the subtle transitions from summer to autumn and then winter are not always easy to discern. But we do notice the changes when writ large; the first chill frosts, hedgerows laden with fruits and berries, the gust of wind that strips trees of a few early browning leaves that flutter to the ground, the shortening days and lengthening nights.

But for the creatures of the valley the countdown from the time of plenty to the depravations of a bleak winter is marked with daily changes. How they adapt and, in that way that animals do, plan, will determine if they survive to the following spring.

For the otter quartet those choices were evolving, though in different ways for each of them. The burden of hunting still fell on Kuschta. True, she could now travel with her attendants in tow – no need to lug a fish corpse a mile or more – but in the final analysis, despite the pups approaching their six-month birthday, she was still the bread winner. Lutran was becoming increasingly rumbustious, differentiating himself from the others by his behaviour. It would be extreme to describe him as a bully or aggressive towards the others (that will come in time), but he was unruly, disruptive, throwing his weight around for the best space in the holt for no other reason than because he could. His attempts at hunting were often furious rather than effective, making life harder for his siblings as he spooked potential prey, so on the night-time travels they began to split into two tribes – Lutran and the rest. Willow and Wisp, by contrast, still shadowed their mother, content to follow her lead. In appearance they were losing their puppy fat, becoming more like complete half-size adults, whilst Lutran was long in body and skinny in frame with plenty of filling out to do. But that was fine; there was still plenty to eat for now.

I don’t know it for an absolute certainty but I reckon it is a fair assumption that September into October must be one of the most bountiful periods of the year for everyone and everything that lives in the valley.

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