A Poet & an Otter

RING OF BRIGHT WATER (211 pp.)--Gavin Maxwell--Duffon ($5).

Pets? Poet Gavin Maxwell, grandson of famed Natural Historian Sir Herbert Maxwell, has investigated them all: a lemur, a bush baby, a wildcat, a rail, five wild geese, a dozen tropical birds, a goat that jumped on the kitchen table, and a cow that strolled upstairs one day and almost gave birth on the landing. Otters, he proclaims in this lyric celebration of the beast he loved the best and of the wild Scottish coast they romped along together, are the greatest.

A member of the musteline family (mink, marten, mongoose, badger, weasel, skunk), the otter is essentially "a big water weasel"--most northern breeds reach the size of a spaniel, but some in South America grow as big as a seal. He looks like a giant, furry snail. He swims as a swallow flies, all liquid grace. He runs like something squeezed out of a tube, and whenever he sits down he looks like a six-year-old girl in her mother's fur coat--in some species his hide is so loose that it hangs down in folds and even spreads out on the ground around him. He is almost as tractable as a dog, certainly more ingenious and inventive. He is violently affectionate, independent, mischievous, curious--and naturally housebroken.

Zippers & Fireplugs. Mijbil, the hero of this book, was about as ottery as an otter can get. Author Maxwell picked him up as a pup in the swamp country of Iraq --unaware at the time that in finding a pet he had also discovered a new subspecies (Lutirogale perspicillata maxwelli).

Mij was a clever little rascal. The first time he saw a water tap he turned it on in a matter of seconds, and the first time he saw a zipper--zing! it was open before Maxwell could lift a finger. He quickly learned to trot around London on a leash, sniff at fireplugs, untie the tightest knot with his teeth, and sleep on his back with his arms outside the covers just as his master did. And whenever Maxwell overslept, Mij darted beneath the covers, ripped them loose and stole the pillow.

Almost anything Mij got his paws on he put in his mouth. He once chewed up a razor blade in his powerful, crab-cracking jaws, seemed to suffer no ill effects. In the country he liked to sneak up behind a cow, take a snap at her tail and sit grinning as she furiously kicked up her heels. He also displayed a peculiar passion for nipping every ear lobe that came within his appallingly elastic range. And once, when Maxwell tried to take an eel away from him, Mij effortlessly bit clean through his hand. "He let go almost in the same instant and rolled on his back squirming with apology."

Eclairs & Aquabesques. There are almost innumerable opportunities in this story for a writer to turn cute, but Author Maxwell resists the temptation. He writes about animals and nature as well as anyone in the field, and he is never cloying when he describes how Mij toused like a dog with his favorite rubber eclair, lay endlessly on his back juggling anything that came to paw, or hid underneath the rug and then leaped out like a tiger on the first passerby.

Nothing could touch Mij in the water as he soared, a fish tucked tight in either armpit, through infinitely intricate aqua-besques; but on land he was much more vulnerable. He met his end being bludgeoned to death by a bloodthirsty truck driver who took advantage of his tame, trusting nature. Writes Author Maxwell, with emotions of pain and rage that the reader cannot help but share: "I became fonder of him than of almost any human being, and to write in the past tense makes me feel desolate ... I hope he was killed quickly, but I wish he had had one chance to use his teeth."

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