heartbreaking work of staggering sadness

I hate otter rescues. I love otters. I just hate picking up the pieces of their species and surrendering them to the good folks at the Aquarium.

The sun was setting as the call came in. Almost all our calls have been coming at sunset lately so I wasn't completely surprised. We had a full grown otter, convulsing, bleeding from the neck, on the farthest end of the drive on beach (nearly an hour from my home). Thankfully my dear friends who live closest to the dunes were willing to do the fetching. I did the coordinating (made simpler by his obviously critical status and his advanced age - pup pick ups are far more complicated...). I prepped the med room in vain. I know the Aquarium seldom gives us treatment orders, but still I assembled my arsenal - butorphanol for the pain, lorazepam for the seizures, dextamethasone for the shock, dextrose for the unresponsiveness, fluids just because... and all we got to use were the warm towels - which, by the way, I nearly set fire to in the microwave (2 minutes = perfect, 3.5 minutes = scary smoke).

Our patient was already comatose so he wasn't feeling his pain. Narcotics would have just supressed the adrenaline that was keeping him alive. His gums were pink, so there was hope, and he wasn't actively seizing. He was cold - his temperature never registered even after we dried him off - but with otters it is better to be cold than too warm. Thermoregulating is not their strong suit. And he was breathing - herky jerky breaths with wheezy moans in between - but breathing just the same. He was bleeding, from a tiny hole in his chest, but not gushing. So, all things considered, not horrible for being in such bad shape.

He was still alive when I handed him off a couple hours later so that's considered a success. The rest is out of my hands. I got a mocha (a Fivebucks recently opened up across the street from our rendezvous point - this was my first time inside) and made the 90 minute drive back home. He died before I made it all the way back. No one should have to die in Salinas. Especailly not an otter.

Now, as the adrenaline leaves my body, I give myself the otter pep talk. I review the facts. They are incredibly fragile creatures, falling victim to just about every toxin and parasite in the ocean. (And, as far as prognosis goes, I'll take incredibly suspicious perfectly round single hole over protozoas and enchephalitis any day. People suck but at least sometimes they have bad aim... Not in this case, of course, but sometimes... And most of the bloody otters this year have been torn up by sharks...) Otters depend on their fabulous fur (1 million hairs per square inch, humans have 150,000 on our entire heads...) for warmth, they have little fat to fall back on when food is scarce. Maternal separation can be fatal.

And then I give myself the lecture. Otter numbers are deceptively stable, decreasing by maybe only 10% each year. But in reality, they are a species in crisis as they now have 2 males for every one female. Not a good ratio. And male otters are ruthless rapists, biting the noses of their mates - sometimes killing them. So when a male otter dies it is just one less sexual predator in the sea.

And then I stretch the facts. Maybe our Southern Sea Otter isn't even truly a separate species from their bigger, furrier cousins in Alaska. So if an oil spill comes to the Monterey Bay and wipes them all out in the weekend, maybe it's not really an extinction.

And then I just stop thinking at all. Because I hate otter rescues.