Giant Otters on NPR

I'll be on All Things Considered this evening March 17, 2009, talking about getting bitten by an Amazon Giant Otter. I enjoyed everything leading up to the actual bite.
It should air near the end of the show; i.e., between 5:30 and 6 pm. Eastern time.
If you miss the broadcast, you can listen after 7 pm Eastern here.
You can also go to npr.org and leave a comment there, to counterbalance all the people who are sure to write in, hopping mad, to tell me what an idiot I must be to pet an otter.
OK, now scroll down to read today's post about a peanut butter factory. It's a big ol' goofy world, in'it?

Giant Amazon Otter!

I thought I had seen the Amazon's rarest mammal in the giant anteater, but there were more amazements yet to come. Karanambu Ranch is famed as a rehabilitation/rescue site for orphaned giant otter cubs, in the singular person of Diane McTurk. Diane is one of those people whom you meet, look at and instantly wish you could multiply somehow, to spread all that knowledge and caring around for awhile longer. There's no better way to learn an animal than to live with it, and Diane has been mama to multitudes of orphaned and kidnapped giant otter cubs. Through them, she's come to know the animal as no one else on the planet does. Upon arriving at Karanambu, we were taken down to the banks of the Rupununi to meet two of Diane's charges, who were swimming freely in the river under the eye of an Amerindian attendant .

I was confused upon seeing my first semi-wild otter in South America. But for some eye and nose issues, it looked very much like our North American river otter (Lutra canadensis). If this was a giant otter, it must be a baby. I stared and stared, trying to reconcile what I was seeing with what I had been expecting to see. It was a gorgeous little thing.

As became abundantly clear in just a few moments, this was not a giant Amazon otter, but a Neotropical river otter, Lontra longicaudus. A life mammal, to be sure, and endangered (CITES Appendix 1). It was out of habitat here in this silty, slow-moving river, having been brought to Diane as a purported giant otter from an unknown locale. Neotropical river otters inhabit clearer, faster-flowing streams than do giant Amazonian otters. Nevertheless, Diane accepted it and raised it, and it has given vital companionship to the star of the show and central focus of Diane's life work.

First peek of the giant Amazon otter, Pteronura b. brasiliensis:

Hello!Oh my! What nice pink lips you have!At this point I had been away from home for several days and was jonesing heavily for Chet Baker. This otter's googly eyes and floppy lips did something for me. If you've always had a Thing for Otters, as I have, a Boston terrier is the next best thing. And unlike otters, they're perfectly legal to keep as pets!

Nah, nothing otterlike about this dog. Couple that pining for The Bacon with the fact that I never thought I'd ever lay eyes on a giant Amazon otter, and I am in a full Science Chimp swoon.

to be continued...