A sad otter's tale
The purpose of this post is to raise awareness about otter road casualties and illegal or unintended trapping. Last week (9th January) saw the tragic death of a beautiful Eurasian otter ( Lutra lutra ). It was on my way to the Middle Level Commissioners (MLC) offices in March (Cambridgeshire) that I spotted the corpse on the side of a busy main road and I pulled over to take a look. Once I had reached the otter, I realised that it was probably a relatively young animal, since it wasn't much bigger than a domestic cat. The hind feet of the otter corpse (09/01/2018). With a pang of sadness (otters are one of my favourite animals), I saw that it had a head wound, most likely from a collision with a car. The pool of blood in which the otter lay was relatively fresh and very little smell issued from the body, indicating that it had not been there long, probably around 48 hours. A closer inspection of the animal revealed that its abdomen was slightly swollen and tha