Since our last update Mazu has celebrated her six-month birthday. Rita and Glen have had various visitors recently which have kept them even more busy, but they, and their son Timothy, have still sent us the following lengthy updates:
Rita wrote (dated Thursday 12 August 2010) :
We don't often get live fish for Mazu to catch in her pond, but when we do she seems to greatly enjoy the game. She focuses well on the task, even catching our slippery eel-like fish with her hands fairly easily. It is a different story down at the river. I see small fish and shrimp darting away from Mazu without her giving them even a cursory glance. I'm left to wonder if, as Mazu's rather clueless otter mother, it is my role to chase down those fish for her first? Is fishing in the wild a steeper learning curve for an otter than I suspect?
At the river, there are hidden recesses under submerged logs, or deep quiet pools where I also believe fish might be hiding, but Mazu is very reluctant to explore places I will not go in first. Though I am not always aware of what her limits are at 6 months, she instinctively knows. Far from impulsively dashing into water first, she always waits for my lead. Though given permission, she has yet to try fishing in anyone's fish ponds, because she will go no further than I will, which isn't very far. This morning, we walked sedately around 12 neat ponds teaming with fish. Mazu gave every appearance of being bored to tears.
Mazu has officially been with us 6 months. What a wild ride! This week I have been noticing her increasing strength. The other night, she finally succeeded in dislodging the hunk of concrete sitting on top of her pool plug...I was alert to the water pouring out this time. She runs and gallops in and out of the grassland along our airstrip. In the water, she has discovered how to porpoise. She holds her own in swift water, although she still likes to swim directly behind me in my wake if she can, often holding onto my shorts if she can. Swimming downriver, she wants to engage me in play.
We continue to see evidence of other otters of Mazu's kind down at the river. In fact, yesterday, after I had investigated otter prints and paw holes all over a swampy area on our closest sand bar, our son heard an otter calling there after dark. Whether it's only one, or many in our area, we don't know. We do know that Congolese friends saw a pair together in a swamp on the other side of the river not too long ago.
We're rather nervously embarking on an experiment this weekend. I have to leave Mazu for 5 days to get a tooth fixed in Kinshasa. Glen and Timothy will be taking care of Mazu while I'm gone. So far, Mazu has not willingly followed anyone besides me outdoors, even when they've had fish in their hands. Will she learn to follow Glen to the river each day with me gone for a lengthy period of time? In the house, she goes to bed if she can't find me... It could turn out to be a very quiet 5 days, or not! We're hoping, of course, that Mazu will rise to the occasion and learn to put her trust in a few more people.
We've been happily hosting visiting family and friends. Mazu has been a charmer.
Glen wrote (dated Friday 13 August 2010):
Rita has to go to Kinshasa to see a dentist. Timothy and I are left to deal with Mazu. She doesn't even respond to my voice. We are reluctant to try and take her to the river. We may not be able to get her back. I think we will fill up the pond more to make it more fun, and do more wrestling for exercise. We will see...
Oh, an otter has been spotted on the closest island. Timothy heard it when they camped out there the other night.
Timothy wrote (dated Saturday 14 August 2010) :
My mom left today, along with all the visitors, so my dad and I are alone with Mazu. So far she is handling it ok I guess. It has just been an afternoon, so we will see how it goes the next few days. She woke up for her afternoon nap, and cried for a while looking for my mom. She came out long enough to finish up all the food that was put out for her, and then disappeared to go to sleep again. I went and sat down close to where she was trying to sleep and played with some of her toys, which I guess was more exiting then trying to sleep and wait for my mom to appear. She did not really play with me, but rather took the toys and entertained herself with them. She would lay on her back, and feel them with her front hands, and then push them down her belly to her hind legs so they could feel them too.
My dad gave her some fish out in the court yard. She finished the fish and took the skin in to the pond to chew on. I have not seen her eat in the water before, but she was having a good time playing with the hard slimy fish skin. She must have spent the rest of the afternoon playing by herself in the pond. She seemed content all by herself playing in all the water hyacinth. After dark, we put some rice out in her room, and that was the last we heard of her. She must have eaten it and gone to bed. We will see what she does in the morning.
I camped on the sand bar just below Kikongo two nights ago, and heard an otter whistling in the island right off by the saw mill. I went back the next morning, and found large footprints and trails all over the island. People are also seeing lots of prints and even spot them fairly often down at the fish ponds in the early morning. I have a few friends who are going to be taking me out next week to show me some places where they are eating almost every night.
Glen wrote (dated Sunday 15 August 2010) :
Timothy and I are busy dealing with Mazu in Rita's absence. Mazu gets up early and bumps the door before light to try and get into the house. She spends her time going from one pond to the other and coming through the house between each dip. We are trying to trail her to dry her off a bit before she climbs on a couch or bed.
The biggest difficulty is that she will not follow me like she does Rita. Even if I can bribe her to go on a walk with some fish, I'm not sure if I could get her back. I'm afraid she would get spooked and then I would never get her back. I don't want to spend the night off in the swamp. I'm wearing myself out wrestling with Mazu to give her some exercise.
I hope we all survive until Tuesday when hopefully Rita will return.
Rita wrote (dated Wednesday 18 August 2010):
When I returned home from my 5 day trip yesterday, Mazu crept into my lap making soft sounds as if she couldn't quite believe it was me. She was very tender and gentle. I was touched. And, she ka-chunked for me, making me wonder if that vocalization is a greeting for someone who is new or hasn't been around for awhile... Mazu was loath to let me out of her sight all day long yesterday, following me around wherever I went.
Towards evening, we went down to the river for a swim. Her first in 5 days. It must have been a happy relief to swim in so much water again.
Though we had at 600 liters of water carried up from the spring for her pond at the house before I left, it was fouled by the time I got here yesterday. Unusual for Mazu. Happily, we had an early rain last night (oh joy). Not only did we improve the quality of the water in Mazu's pond last night, but much to Mazu's delight, there were full rain barrels under our gutter spouts this morning. She draped herself over one barrel lip to have a look, then promptly plunged in for a swim.
Timothy wrote (dated Monday 23 August 2010):
I went out with a group of villagers who were catching fish in the dried swamp on the other side of the river. Most of the swamp has dried up, but there are potholes that range in size, that still have quite a bit of water in them. They are the only bits of water with fish in them in the whole swamp, however, there is knee to ankle deep mud connecting them. The women go in with buckets and empty all the water from these fishponds, so they can collect the eels. There are often big trees in the ponds, with big caves under them where crocodiles, snakes, and lots of fish hide. These fish ponds are not too far from the river, but are under dense cover, and are close to the land where there is a thick forest.
After hearing that otters like to visit fish ponds that have already been emptied, I left the villagers catching fish and set out down the swamp to visit other fish ponds. There were tracks everywhere: lots of African civet, a ton of marsh mongoose, monitor lizard, sitatunga antelope, and lots of otter runs [slides]. There seemed to be more than one otter, because there were different size runs. There were small runs with somewhat smaller foot prints, and then close by - bigger runs with big foot prints. The runs seamed to go from pond to pond, I assume because these were the only bits of water left besides the river. In between the ponds there were lots of large water snail shells. Some were cracked and some were whole, but empty. The guy I was with said that the cracked ones were from monitor lizards and marsh mongooses who hike them to crack them, while the otters and African civets pull the snail out with their fingers/claws. The snails all seem to have a little tear shaped door, that has been ripped off, even when the shell is left intact. The shells are thin and dark. We were approaching a pond when the young guy who I was with stopped abruptly, and I heard a big splash. We had startled a large otter sitting on the bank. Because of some branches and the guy in front of me, I did not see it jump into the water, but my friend saw it as it went in to the water and identified it. We sat at the pond for about 20 minutes waiting for it to come out, but did not see any movement. There was a tree in the middle of the pond with its roots in the water, and we assumed it to be holding out in the cave under the roots. We also went over and saw where it had been on the bank, and where it had jumped in the water. In all my walking I did not see a single latrine though. We surprised the otter at about 2:30 PM.
Another friend of mine has a large fish pond out about two miles from here, and about 1 mile from the river. He has tilapia and snake head eels in it, and empties it about once a year. A few days ago, he and his family went to empty it and found very few fish there. I went out to see the pond the other day, and he showed me all the otter evidence around it. There were big trails in the bushes, and a large clearing on the side of the fish pond that was all dirt. He said there had been a fish head there when he came with his family. There was also a place my friend identified as the otter's habitual latrine. When I got there, the rising pond water had already flooded the latrine site leaving just a small amount of spraint. It was pretty solid, and seemed to be made up of chewed plant matter. This location is the farthest I have seen otter tracks from the river. I have not walked it, but I would say it was a good mile or so from the river up a little stream.
Rita wrote (dated Wednesday 25 August 2010):
Mazu is shadowing me this afternoon, so this may be a very brief message. This morning she accompanied three of us pulling out some trees and elephant grass in a public area I walk through every day. Mazu romped around in the grass playing funny otter games quite happily before suddenly deciding it was time to return home to go to bed. She went over to the main path pleading with me to please let's go.
Because Mazu has so much loose skin, our daughter describes the difficulty of picking her up as being similar to the challenge of picking up a puddle. It's very hard to get a good grip on such a wiggly, slippery skinned animal. This suits Mazu fine, who, unless she's feeling tender, would rather not be picked up anyway. When she runs, this bulk of extra skin swings underneath her making the children laugh. Sometimes she pushes it over her forehead with both paws creating what can only be called, a "blubber bonnet." By sliding her loose skin around, she can deftly reach any place on her body, except perhaps, her nose. On the subject of blubber, Mazu now weighs 13 kgs. For a slippery, loose skinned otter, she actually seems quite fit and strong. She may be the only otter around who makes a mile loop up and down a steep hill to the river to swim each day.
I will soon need to make another dental trip to Kinshasa, leaving Mazu in the good hands of Glen and Timothy. Their greatest challenge while I'm gone is finding a way to provide Mazu with enough exercise to keep her happy. She refused to go out of the house any further than the front porch during my last trip. We're working on new ideas.
Timothy wrote (dated Friday 27 August 2010):
Yesterday I went exploring on the other side of the river, where people had said otters had been playing. A friend and I discovered otter evidence like I have not seen before. The first place was right on the river bank. The place is just on the other side of the river and up a little bit from the place we always swim. The water over there is swift, but there are a lot of trees hanging in the water where it is deep, and does not move as fast. We went under one such tree that formed a nice dark cave with its leafy branches. The bank was hard grey clay, about 2 feet tall. There was a groove in the bank going straight up through the clay. The groove was full of otter prints in the clay, and looked like it had been made from the otter going up it so much. At the bottom of the bank there was a little shelf of clay before it got deep, which was also full of prints. Even though the clay was underwater and current was going over it, the prints were still there from when the otter was there last.
At the top of the little cliff, we found a trail through the undergrowth of young trees and vines. Six meters in, we found what we thought might be the latrine. There was black and green goo there. We could not make out what was in it. There were also water stains on leaves. I imagine that would be urine. The jobs were just a few inches off the main trail. About 7 meters in from the river was a nice dirt pad that had been swept clean. The clay here was hard, and lumpy, but it did not have any leaves on it, and there were otter prints all over in it, so I think it was made by them. About another meter in there was a huge area that was all swept clean of leaves and sticks. It looked like a number of pads all blended together. The big place was about 3 by 6 meters. This whole area from the river in, was very dark from forest cover. Maybe these places are where they roll after coming out of the water? I have seen a few of these pads now when looking at otter trails. From this little clearing there were two other places where it looked like the otter made its way to the river, and another trail leading into the swamp. During the rains this place would be at water level, but now it is slightly higher than the still wet mud all around it.
The next place we went to were some fish ponds upriver from there a little bit, half a mile or so. There were some 20 fish ponds with swamp on one side, and a stream running through them that empties into the river. We started seeing otter prints just as we reached the fish ponds. There was all kinds of evidence of them feeling around in the reeds and mud along the edges. There were also well worn paths out of one fish pond, through the grass and into another fish pond. Wherever there was mud, there were otter tracks. It looked like there were various sizes as well, so I imagine it was more than just one otter. I did not see any small prints though. Maybe it is the wrong time of year for young ones. Another print that has been almost everywhere the otter prints have been, and was also very numerous here, was the marsh mongoose. Their prints were everywhere. It looked like the mongooses were following the otters, because I saw a few otter prints, with mongoose prints on top of them. I also did not see any latrines or fish heads anywhere.
The fish that I know of and have seen in the swamp at this time include: Snakehead eels, at least 5 other kinds of eels, 2 kinds of knife fish, 4 kinds of swamp tilapia, butterfly fish, and a small swamp fish that is probably Aphyosemion christyi. There are some other kinds of fish here and there, but those are the main ones. The man made fish ponds have some eels, snake heads, and tilapia.