Bog Myrtle & Peat

I saw it first. Something shifted in the straw, then it turned and rolled over on itself. My father said it was nothing as he passed; he was carrying pails of water, and the weight made his knuckles crack. Lambs sang in the lamplight, and the sheep drank deeply as they do when they’re milky. It was nothing, he said. Snow birled in through the shed’s door and it lay in mats on the old tin roof.

But it was more than nothing, and I walked towards it. My father had piled this part of the shed with lumber. There was an old staircase and three long-busted ladders; shattered pallets and the broken end of a hurdle. If this weather stayed, more sheep would need to come in; he’d have to move this wood to make space for them; he’d have to build new pens and bind them together with twine. It had already been spoken of.

Down in a gap between the wooden rungs, there was movement again. It was black and prickled, half buried in cobwebs and mounds of chainsaw shavings. I said “Look” again, and what a sigh my father gave to that. I said “I think it’s a cat”. But instead of looking, my father bent his head to twin lambs in the far stall. They were yellow and fresh, and their mother already loved them.

Cats often came to the yard and the byre. They stashed their kittens in the hay bales, and in autumn when cattle called for the dry grass, we’d find rabbit bones and feathers in the rafters. Sometimes there were kittens themselves. They had runny eyes and their breath rang in a rattle. If you had the time for it, you could sit out and watch them playing on summer nights. In gambolling and mischief, one might slip into a gap between the bales and be stuck. We couldn’t hear the feeble mew, and maybe we’d have ignored it anyway. In a week or so (and sooner in a warm year) the juices would blacken the bales and we’d find their bodies dry and light as a knot of newspaper when the winter came.

We knew most of the cats in this yard, but they would die and be replaced in an endless cycle. Finding a cat was nothing special, and a new one normal. It made sense to assume I’d discovered a cat, but it was too oily and thick for that. Besides, the straw crackled clumsily, and cats lie quiet.

I had never seen an otter before. I didn’t know what it was. It hissed at me, and I stepped back with a jolt. “Dad, look at this!” and that made him come over at last. I lifted the end of a ladder for a better look. The animal was black and ball-eyed with a beard of whiskers. My cousin used to have allergic reactions which made her lips swell up. It looked like her; all fat and wobbly about the face.

The otter made Dad anxious. It clearly wasn’t well, and I know he thought of killing it, just as he would kill anything to prevent unneeded suffering. But these animals are protected by a threatening web of legislation, and people always suspect farmers of wrong-doing. The otter’s arrival was like the discovery of stolen goods on the property; a cache of drugs or weapons bound for Belfast as they were in those days – and even if you had nothing to do with it, you wouldn’t want to have your name connected to a problem. You could say that he over-reacted, but he called the RSPCA and a van came out to the yard a few hours later. Perhaps he wanted everything to be above-board, and I wonder if he tidied up before they came. He had nothing to hide, but there’s always something for officials to find if they’re minded to make trouble.

The otter remained where I had found it, and I showed the uniformed inspector where to look. Then she took control and made me leave while she caught it with a wire noose. I wasn’t even allowed to look in the crate as it was carried to the van, and while she said she’d call to let us know what happened, she didn’t. So we rang a week later and learned that my otter had been very old and very ill. The inspector had killed it for us.

I’d love to say that my first otter was seen through a ring of bright water on the bank of a gaudy stream. It would be fine to look back on memories of whistling and play, and through them, I’d be able to spin yarns about otters so long and refreshing that you’d almost start to love the world again. I have seen such brightnesses in the thirty intervening years since that otter came to the lambing sheds, and I’m grateful for every one. But every chance encounter with health and hunting freedom is underpinned by that memory of a cold evening in a cramped shed; a spark of thrilling proximity, quickly followed by a resentful recollection that these animals belong only to people who know best.