“The first otter to go into deep water had felt the same fear that Tarka felt that night; for his ancestors, thousands of years ago, had been hunters in woods and along the banks of rivers, running the scent of blooded creatures on the earth, like all the members of the weasel race to which they belonged. This race had several tribes in the country of the Two Rivers. Biggest were the brocks, a tribe of badgers who lived in holts scratched among the roots of trees and bushes, and rarely went to water except to drink. They were related to the fitches or stoats, who chased rabbits and jumped upon birds on the earth; and to the vairs or weasels, who sucked the blood of mice and dragged fledgelings from the nest; and to the grey fitches or polecats, so rare in the forests; and to the pine-martens, a tribe so harried by men that one only remained, and he had found sanctuary in a wood where a gin was never tilled and a gun was never fired, where the red deer was never roused and the fox never chased. He was old; his canine teeth worn down. Otters knew the ponds in this wood and they played in them by day, while herons stalked in the shallows and nothing feared the old lady who sometimes sat on the bank, watching the wild creatures which she thought of as the small and persecuted kinsfolk of man.” NatureAnimalOtter Book:Tarka the Otter Source: Tarka the Otter