Dead In The Water (Rebecca Schwartz Mystery #4) (The Rebecca Schwartz Series) by Julie Smith

Julio.” Whining the word “otters.”
    “How about if I eat my sandwich first?”
    “No-o-o. You love fish, you shouldn’t be eating tuna.”
    “You’re not kidding I love them. I’m crazy about tuna. And sharks—I bite them, they don’t bite me. And sushi. Especially sushi.”
    “Ew. Gross!”
    “Thar she blows!” hollered Keil.
    “A whale?” Even I knew there wouldn’t be whales in these waters in August, but what else could he mean?
    For once, he didn’t bother to correct me, just shrugged and gave us all a cute grin. “No, otters. There isn’t an otter yell.”
    “Where? Where?” Libby nearly capsized the boat trying to see them.
    “Over there.” He pointed off to the right, toward the far shore. “I think it’s several rafts. What do you think, Julio?”
    Edge of hand to forehead like an old sea dog, Julio scanned the scenery. He shrugged. “I don’t know. There’s something out there. Maybe it’s just kelp.”
    “Let’s go,” Libby begged. “Julio, let’s go, let’s go.”
    He retrieved the anchor and once again told Keil to release the jib.
    There were three dark spots up ahead that could be rafts of otters, and I found myself nearly as excited as Libby at the prospect of seeing them up close. These furry critters have been known to amuse tourists by playing Frisbee with old hubcaps. Even when behaving less anthropomorphically, the California sea otter is the cutest mammal in the water, and doesn’t have that much competition on land.
    “Damn!” Keil said. “I think it’s kelp.”
    Julio stared long and critically. “There goes one.” Some of the kelp had taken a dive. “It’s kelp
and
otters. Crazy little things. They like to wrap up in kelp blankets.”
    “For warmth? You’d think there’d be a better way.”
    “No, to anchor themselves. They have a hell of a time keeping warm, though, even with those beautiful coats.”
    “No blubber,” said Keil.
    Julio nodded. “Awkward stage of evolution. They have to keep their fur full of air—which takes up about ten percent of their time, if you can imagine that—and they have to keep their paws out of the water; and then, of course, they have to consume all those calories that people get so bent out of shape about.”
    “Look!” Libby shouted. “They’re eating.”
    Otters are terribly trusting little animals, which is one reason they became nearly extinct in the nineteenth century and the early part of this one. I read somewhere that in 1900 a single otter pelt went for over one thousand dollars, which must have been nearly enough to retire on in those days. Protective legislation was finally enacted, but the otter, though apparently a very bright little animal, never got smart enough to be afraid of people. By now, these rafts had let us come close enough to see how zany they looked with their fur half-wet. When soaked, a sea otter is sleek as a seal, but let him start to dry out, and his fine fur—the thickest of any mammal in the world—goes every which way.
    The ones Libby had spotted—probably having their eighty-ninth snack of the day—were lying on their backs, reclining Romans at a banquet. They were using rocks to bang away at shellfish, setting up a fairly clamorous racket. For thumbless beasts, they use their paws a lot like we do.
    Julio said, “We don’t give them shells in their tank at the aquarium. It’s cute to watch them show their tool-using skills, but you have to pay. They take the shells and bang them against the windows like a bunch of teenage vandals. The acrylic gets so scarred-up you can’t even see through it. Know how much it costs to feed one of those critters? About six thousand dollars a year.”
    It was hard to imagine these cute little devils as vandals. Their perennially worried expressions made them look responsible.
    “They like to raft with the same sex,” said Julio. “Those are females.”
    Only I was brave enough to ask the question: “How can you tell?”
    The kids