It's important for us to explain to our nation that life is important. It's not only life of babies, but it's life of children living in, you know, the dark dungeons of the Internet. -- G.W. Bush, Arlington Heights, Ill., Oct. 24, 2000
Otters! The latest in a string of bizarre and unexplained
attacks rocks humankind. From Florida to Romania, one word
is striking terror in the hearts of humans everywhere.
Otters! Otters!
Dateline: Romania. An innocent fisherman in a sleepy hamlet hauls in a fish.
The otters attack. The crafty mammal sneaks up on its prey, then sinks its
otter teeth into his fleshy Romanian buttocks. Though the catch
represented the biggest fish the fisherman had ever seen, the otter sprang its
aquatic companion from the human captor, in an apparent them-versus-us show of
solidarity.
It's a troubling development, conjuring nightmarish images: armies of otters rampaging
through our wildlands, like some horrible campfire ghost story come true. It
resonates on a primitive level, a surreal and haunting message about the
inherent futility of man's aspirations. You hope, you dream, you plan for the
future -- and then an otter bites you in the ass. You're realizing your
pathetic small-town glory of lifting the largest fish you've even seen in your
life from the local lake -- and then an otter bites you in the ass.
