Chapter 1: Nice to Meet You

The Otter

Have you ever heard the word "rare" or "exotic"? How about the word "endangered"? Ok, one more word and I'll begin my story. Have you ever heard the word "extinct"? Ok, so we all know that these words are ones that us in the animal kingdom are glad we don’t speak English or even human, because we would not like these words so much. They do not mean happy thoughts for anyone who gets any one of those labels. No, they are not fun words, but there is an even worse thing that humans do and us animals do not. Well, not in the same manner at least. Poaching. Yes, it sounds like a way to cook an egg, and it is as well as being a sick past time in which a human will kill an endangered animal for sport.

You might be thinking right now what an awful life I must have with all these scary words flying around, but I do not. Why? Because I have yet to understand what they mean. I tell you this tale from beyond the grave. My ending is not a happy ending, but my story must be told, and humans must read the words of the giant otter who lived a life of any animal in this world, until his species became one of the most endangered animal in the tropics. How an otter, just an ordinary giant otter, like myself, found his days of floating in freshwater streams, eating fish, and hanging out with my family of 25 in our duplaix, his happy, contented days turn to horrific nightmares of unimaginable proportions.

True fear can only rarely be felt by those who have experienced atrocities like I did when Gere Mettler came to the flooded forest outside a small town in Ecuador. A man with stained and reeking khaki pants and a white t-shirt with its sleeves cut off to the shoulder. Gere, Mettler, a man who stood, at six feet and four inches, over all us animal in South America. Except if there were a giraffe living there at the time, and I can’t tell you one way or another about that.

The year today is 1970. I know this because some campers made a huge ruckus last night by our dupaix. One man screamed something about a new year and decade before throwing a very heavy green bottle near the banks of the river where we were living. He stumbled close to the towering fire the group had made and finally fell to his knees in the sand before falling asleep in a wet pile of it. I will never understand the ways of humans, truly mysterious. Well, I tell you the year because something important began to happen around now, and eventually would become famous to otters and humans alike. That something was known as Gere Mettler, poacher extraordinaire. Please don’t get me wrong and believe that one man with a gun was what changed the lives and the world of the giant otter. That gives him too much credit. Many of us have died at the hands of a local who would try to fish and we’d get in their way, and they’d come at us with no fear and no concern, only anger and frustration. And then there’s the loggers and the hunters who have visited our shores. The worst humans of all, though, must be the stealers. Men who are stealers and want us giant sized otters, which are considered by most to be adorable little creatures, as their pet, or a pet for their little child. Do you even know what it’s like to go from the lush greens of the forest, the bright warm tan of the sandy beaches, and the cool deep blue of the river to a house with a little girl carrying you every where? Well, ok, that’s fair. How could you know how that would feel? You are reading this story. And otters cannot read. So I suppose you must simply let me tell you about it. Hmmm, how should I put it…it SUCKS! Not only do you miss your family, but you are constantly being shoved into things, and through things, and the worst is being dressed in the clothes off the doll on her bed. That’s truly the worst, I believe that.

In the winter of 1970, when men drank and yelled “Happy…”something or other, there were thousands of us giant otters. So many that men were stepping all over us practically. But when the irritation of men became directed at us, the poaching began. There is something about a hostile environment that lures men like Gere Mettler to the calamity so that they may exploit it freely and without protest from anyone. It is one thing to get angry with an animal because they hinder your hunt for food, but it is entirely another to cater to the cruel desires of women with fur coats in their closets. That’s what poachers do, that is who they are. They are a species of their own.

Now that I am dead, I cannot feel anger towards Mettler for what he did. I do not want to give away my story too soon or anything like that, but I shall share with you now that after Mettler left Ecuador, there were only seven giant otters left alive. It was tragic. How could that possibly happen, you wonder? He was only one man up against thousands of otters, right? Well, that is why I wish to tell you this story, so that if you ever see anything similar happening where you are�"stop it. Stop it immediately, or history will repeat itself. If a giant otter cannot save himself or his family or even those of the same kind, do you really believe that a human will always and forever be any different? I suppose that’s your decision to make really. I shall finish my tale now. You will never believe the things that happened in the forest that month. It curdles the blood, all the dead bodies on the sandy beaches they played on not a week before Mettler came. The happiness and play that filled the burrow was replaced brutally with the echoes of screams as each tried to escape the sadistic tools he used and the loud and smoggy machinery that aided him in his quest for wealth and conquest. It was a very bad year for otters, that can be said with dead certainty. Pray you never become endangered or extinct as a species. It's not the extinction per say that is the most painful, it's the road you must travel with your loved ones to get to the destination. But now that we have been properly introduced and you now know what kind of story this will be, I will end our chapter here and we will discuss the process of extinction, from the eyes of a participant in the procedure in the next chapter. I am tired now.