An Otter Called Pebble Read online

  For Luke

  H. P.

  For Gem

  E. S.

  Jasmine Green and her best friend Tom were sitting on a wobbly wooden platform made of planks, balanced in the branches of a big old oak tree. It was a Friday afternoon in the middle of August, and it had been raining for days. It wasn’t raining at the moment, but the cloudy sky hung low over the fields like a heavy grey blanket.

  From their tree house, Jasmine and Tom could see the whole of Oak Tree Farm. The farmyard, with its barns and sheds, and the long, low farmhouse with its red-tiled roof. The woods in the distance. The fields all around, dotted with cows and sheep. Jasmine’s pet pig, Truffle, snuffling in the orchard. Her little brother, Manu, and his best friend, Ben, digging a hole in the mud by the tool shed. And, just below the tree, snaking off into the distance, the winding river that ran right through the farm.

  The tree house was their new idea. So far, it consisted only of the plank platform and a rickety wooden ladder propped against the lowest branch. A rope hung down from a smaller branch. Tied to the other end of the rope, on the wet grass, was a basket containing apples, biscuits and a bottle of juice.

  “OK,” said Jasmine. “Pull very slowly.”

  Tom took hold of the rope and cautiously hauled up the basket. The contents rolled to one side, the basket tipped up and the bottle and apples dropped on to the grass.

  “Oh, well,” said Tom. “We’ve still got the biscuits.”

  “I’ll get the other stuff,” said Jasmine.

  The ladder wasn’t too bad, as long as you didn’t step on the broken rungs. Jasmine stuffed the bottle and the apples in her coat pockets, and was about to climb up again when a sound caught her attention. It was a loud, regular, squeaky sort of chirping sound, and it came from somewhere on the riverbank. “Listen,” she said. “What bird is that?”

  “I think it’s a distress call,” said Tom. “It’s not normal birdsong.”

  “It sounds like it’s coming from those brambles,” said Jasmine, pointing to a patch of thick undergrowth on the riverbank. “Maybe it’s stuck.”

  “Let’s investigate,” said Tom.

  He climbed down the ladder and they walked to the riverbank. The rain had made it very slippery, and they had to inch down sideways, digging the edges of their wellies into the mud to stop themselves from slithering into the fast-flowing water.

  They came to the edge, where the steep bank ended in a narrow ledge before plunging into the river. Tom was on one side of the bramble patch and Jasmine on the other. The desperate squawking sounded even more distressed from here.

  “I’m sure it’s in there somewhere,” said Jasmine, looking apprehensively into the brambles. “I wish we had gloves.”

  Tom plunged his hands into his jacket pockets and pulled out a pair of crumpled gloves.

  “Ta da!” he said. “Still there from winter.”

  “That’s lucky,” said Jasmine. “You investigate first, then I’ll borrow them and look on this side.”

  As Tom crouched down and gingerly parted the brambles, Jasmine looked along the riverbank. There was a heap of stones and pebbles just above the water level below her.

  Suddenly, a movement caught her eye.

  It was an animal with brown fur, sitting on the stones.

  “Tom,” she whispered.

  He looked up enquiringly and she pointed to the little creature.

  “What?” said Tom. “I can’t see anything.”

  The animal lifted its head up, looked directly into Jasmine’s eyes and gave a loud squeak.

  “Oh!” she gasped. “It’s a baby otter!”

  Tom’s eyes widened. “An otter? Really?”

  The otter squeaked again. Tom crept around the edge of the brambles and crouched beside Jasmine.

  “Wow,” he whispered.

  For a moment they looked at it in silence, trying to take in the extraordinary fact that there was a real live otter cub in their part of the river.

  “Have you ever seen one before?” whispered Tom.

  Jasmine shook her head. “Never. I think they’re really rare.”

  “It’s definitely a baby, isn’t it?” said Tom. “Where are its parents?”

  Jasmine leaned out across the water.

  “What are you doing?” said Tom, clutching her arm. “Don’t fall in!”

  Jasmine continued to peer over the edge. “I’m looking for a hole that might be its home.”

  “Can you see one?”

  “No. There’s nothing. Just a solid cliff of mud.”

  “So what’s a baby otter doing alone on that pile of stones?”

  Jasmine looked at the murky water rushing beneath her. “Maybe it got swept away from its family.”

  “And then scrambled up on those rocks,” said Tom. “And now it’s calling out to its family to come and rescue it.”

  “But what if they don’t come?”

  “Let’s stay and watch,” said Tom. “If they don’t come in a while, one of us can run back to the house and ask your mum what we should do.”

  “I wonder if she’s ever seen an otter,” said Jasmine.

  Jasmine’s mum was a vet, so she had encountered many different animals close up, but Jasmine had never heard her mention treating an otter.

  The otter cub was still making its distress calls.

  “Its family should definitely hear it if they’re nearby,” said Tom. “It’s so loud.”

  Crouched by the brambles, Jasmine studied the cub as the cold grey water swirled around the stones.

  It had a broad furry head, with big round dark eyes and little rounded ears. Its black nose was like a dog’s, and it had a row of white whiskers on either side of its face. Its sleek furry body ended in a thick tail. There was a patch of whiter fur, like a bib, on its throat.

  They waited for a long time, watching the cub and casting their eyes anxiously up and down the river to see if its mother was coming.

  “What if the mother has abandoned it?” said Jasmine. “How long do you think we should wait? It might be really hungry.”

  A gust of wind blew across the water, stirring up ripples and waves. All of a sudden, a wave splashed over the stones where the otter was sitting. With a desperate squawk, the cub slithered off the stones and into the river.

  “Oh, no!” cried Jasmine, springing up and staring in horror as the little otter disappeared beneath the rushing water.

  “It’s being carried downstream,” said Tom, scrambling to his feet. “Let’s go to the bridge. We might be able to get it from there.”

  They scrabbled up the bank and raced down the field, keeping pace with the baby otter as it struggled against the current, sometimes with its head above the water, sometimes completely submerged.

  They headed for the wooden bridge near the bottom of the field. Jasmine ran to the middle of the bridge and climbed over the railings.

  “Hold on to my ankles,” she said. “I’ll try to catch it as it comes under.”

  “I’m not dangling you head first into the river,” said Tom. “It’s too dangerous.”

  “It’ll be fine,” said Jasmine. “You’re strong. Just keep hold of my ankles.”

  Facing the river, she reached her hands behind her back and gripped the bottom rail while she lowered herself down until she was kneeling on the edge.

  “Grab my ankles,” she said. “I’m going to fish it out.”

  “It’s too late,” said Tom. “Look.”

  Jasmine gave a cry of despair as she saw the little otter, its head just above the water, disappearing under the bridge. She got up and ran to the other side. Just beyond the bridge, the river rounded a bend, where a huge weeping willow tree trailed its delicate branches into the w
ater. As they watched, the little otter was swept into the branches.

  “Run!” said Jasmine.

  They ran off the bridge and part-scrambled, part-slid their way down the bank above the willow tree, clutching the branches to stop themselves from tumbling into the river.

  The cub seemed to have given up struggling. It was floating on the surface, frighteningly still, tangled in the willow.

  “It’s exhausted,” said Jasmine. “We don’t have much time.”

  “We need a long stick,” said Tom, “to hook it in.”

  “Good idea.”

  Tom was inspecting sticks. “Too short,” he muttered, as he kicked one aside. “Too thin,” he said, rejecting another.

  He picked up a thicker stick and bent it. It snapped in half.

  “Too brittle.”

  Jasmine picked up a longish curved stick. She bent it and it didn’t break.

  “It’s a bit thin,” she said, “but we don’t have much time and I can’t see anything better.”

  She unzipped her raincoat, pulled it off and dropped it on the bank. Then she took off her jumper.

  “What are you doing?” asked Tom.

  Jasmine pulled off her wellies and socks. “I’ll try to drag it to the bank with the stick, but if I can’t do that, I’ll have to get in the water. If we don’t rescue the cub right now, it will die.”

  A tree root, just the right thickness for a hand to grasp, arched out of the ground near the water’s edge. Tom held on to the root and Jasmine held on to Tom’s hand as she climbed down the muddy bank. Both of them stretched as far as they could. With her other hand, Jasmine positioned the stick on the far side of the baby otter and pulled.

  But, however hard she pulled, the cub didn’t move towards her. It just turned round and round in the water.

  “It’s not working,” said Jasmine. “Its body’s moving, but its head’s stuck in the branches.”

  “Try again. See if you can hook its head,” said Tom.

  “I’ll try, but I don’t want to hurt it.”

  She manoeuvred the stick behind the otter’s head. Then she turned to Tom.

  “I’m scared to pull,” she said. “What if I hurt its eye?”

  “I don’t think you will. Look, its eyes have closed.”

  Jasmine looked.

  “That’s a bad sign,” she said. “We need to get it quickly.”

  She pulled on the stick, but the otter’s head stayed stubbornly stuck. She kept trying, but she couldn’t dislodge the cub from the tangle of branches.

  Jasmine’s parents had warned her many times never to go in the river.

  “It’s very fast-flowing,” her dad had told her, “and the bottom is thick silt. You could easily be carried away by the current, and if you tried to stand up, your feet would sink into the mud. It’s far more dangerous than it looks.”

  Now, Jasmine looked up at Tom.

  “I’m going to get it,” she said.

  Tom looked alarmed. “You can’t go in on your own. I’ll come with you.”

  “Don’t be silly. One of us needs to stay dry. I’ll hold on to the branches all the time so I don’t get swept away.”

  The tree was growing on the bank, Jasmine reasoned, so its branches were part of the land, not the river. If she held on to them the whole time, she would always have contact with dry land, so she wouldn’t really be in the river at all. It certainly wouldn’t be dangerous.

  She dropped the stick in the water and grabbed a handful of the spindly willow branches above her head.

  “You can let go of my hand now,” she said.

  “Are you sure those branches will hold?”

  Jasmine gave them a tug. “They’re really strong. And I’m not that heavy. As soon as you let go, I’ll grab another handful.”

  Tom let go. Jasmine grabbed at the branches and swung herself into the river. She gasped as her legs hit the freezing water. Grasping the branches, she tentatively tried to stand up.

  Her feet sank into the mud and she gasped again as the water swirled around her waist. She continued to sink as she lowered her weight down. There didn’t seem to be any solid bottom to the riverbed. The only thing to do was to move along by grabbing on to branches, as though she was swinging along monkey bars.

  Using this method, she moved steadily out into the river, getting closer and closer to the baby otter.

  “Ow!” she cried, as her foot struck a sharp stone.

  “What?” asked Tom. “Are you OK?”

  “Fine,” she said, wincing. “Just stubbed my toe.”

  She was really close now. She grabbed another branch, lifting her foot higher to avoid any more rocks. But when she lowered it again, there was no riverbed.

  “I think it gets deep here,” she said. “I can’t touch the bottom any more.”

  A wave pushed the otter’s body slightly towards her. She saw her chance. With her right hand, Jasmine reached out and grabbed the cub.

  “Yes!” cried Tom. “You’ve got it!”

  The baby otter wriggled in protest.

  “It’s moving!” said Tom in delight.

  “Oh, no,” gasped Jasmine, as the cub squirmed out of her grip. She was going to need both hands.

  She let go of the branches and, frantically treading water, grasped the otter with one hand and worked its head clear of the branches with the other. Then she started to swim back.

  It was really hard to keep the otter’s head out of the water and make any progress. Jasmine panted and gasped with the effort, and found herself swallowing a mouthful of river water.

  Coughing and spluttering, she finally reached the bank and stood up. The silt squished between her toes and the water swirled around her waist. Jasmine’s teeth were chattering. The cub’s eyes were closed. It was completely still.

  “Hand it to me,” said Tom. “Then you can climb up.”

  He clutched the tree root in one hand, leaned over the edge of the bank and stretched his other hand down.

  Jasmine held the cub as high as she could. Tom grasped it by the scruff of its neck, like a kitten.

  “Got it,” he said. “You can let go.”

  Jasmine let go. She scrabbled up the bank, clutching at plants and roots.

  Tom laid the otter on Jasmine’s jumper.

  “It’s shivering,” he said. “It’s freezing cold, poor thing.”

  “Dry it with my jumper,” said Jasmine. “Then we can wrap it in yours once it’s dry.”

  Tom rubbed the otter gently. “It’s so cute,” he said. “Look at its big paws. And it’s got such thick fur.”

  Jasmine hauled herself up on to the flat ground. She was shivering, too.

  “Rub it harder,” she said. “Like Dad does with the new-born lambs. We need to warm it up fast. I’ll do it while you take off your jumper.”

  Jasmine dried the baby otter’s fur and then they wrapped it in Tom’s jumper. Tom picked up the little bundle and held it close to his chest as Jasmine wiped her feet on her wet jumper and pushed them into her wellies. She pulled her coat on and stuffed her socks into the pockets.

  “Right,” she said. “Let’s take this baby home.”

  “Mum!” called Jasmine, as she burst into the farmhouse just ahead of Tom.

  “Hello!” called Nadia. They heard her study door open and she appeared at the top of the stairs.

  “Mum, you’ll never guess what we found!” said Jasmine. “Look!”

  Nadia ran downstairs.

  “Jasmine, you’re soaking! What happened?”

  “Look,” said Jasmine. “It’s amazing.”

  Tom opened his coat. Nadia’s eyes grew wide as she saw the sleeping otter wrapped in his jumper.

  “An otter?” she breathed. “You found an otter cub? Where? How?”

  “In the river,” said Jasmine. “We heard it squawking, and we thought it was a bird’s distress call, so we went down –” She stopped, remembering that her mother wouldn’t approve. “I mean, we looked down, and we saw it,
stranded on some stones. We waited for ages to see if its mum would come, but she didn’t, and then a wave came and swept it into the river, and…” She glanced at Tom. How could she explain the next bit?

  “Jasmine,” said Nadia, in her sternest voice. “You didn’t get into the river, did you?”

  “I had to,” protested Jasmine. “It was getting carried downstream and it couldn’t swim against the current. I didn’t jump in or anything,” she added hastily, seeing her mum’s horrified face. “It got caught in some willow branches, and I reached in and got it.”

  Nadia shuddered. “I don’t even want to think about it. But we’ll deal with that later. Right now, we need to look after the otter.”

  She looked at the little cub and smiled.

  “Well, aren’t you beautiful?” She stroked the otter’s head. Its fur was dry now and it looked so peaceful, snuggled in Tom’s red jumper.

  When Nadia looked up, her eyes were shining. “This is extraordinary, you know. There haven’t been any otter cubs round here for years. Certainly not in my lifetime. What an incredible find.”

  “How should we look after it?” asked Jasmine.

  “Well, I’ve never treated an otter, but the first step with any rescued animal is always rehydration. We don’t know how long this little one has been away from its family. It might have been without fluids for some time. Can you mix up some rehydration formula, Jasmine?”

  “Sure,” Jasmine said. She started to squelch towards the scullery, where Mum kept the medicines and equipment that she used in farm emergencies.

  “Actually,” said Mum, “you need to get changed first.”

  “I’m fine,” said Jasmine.

  “Don’t be ridiculous. You’re soaked to the skin. Go and put on some dry clothes. It’ll only take you a minute.”

  Jasmine sighed and trudged upstairs. Sometimes, there was no point arguing with Mum.

  “While Jasmine’s changing,” she heard Mum say to Tom, “you can weigh the otter. You’ll need to keep a chart, like you did with Holly.”

  Holly was an abandoned kitten that Jasmine and Tom had rescued last winter. Nadia had shown them how to keep a chart recording her weight, feeding times and quantities, and every other aspect of her care and condition.