A natural Tale

A great glacier lay across the land,hundreds of feet thick and so dense from its overlying mass it gave off a hue of aquamarine from its terrifying depths. Flesh searing winds and sixty below temperatures made it impossible for life to exist at its surface. Great booming sounds echoed across this forbidding landscape as the ice shifted and fissured within the glacier as it moved like a gargantuan creaking wooden ship.

Down in the depths where the glacier met the underlying geology massive forces were at play. Where ice met rock, there was a continuous freezing, thawing ,and fracturing of ice, water, and stone. Mountain sized boulders, embedded in the ice, gouged out great hollows as the glacier moved over the earths surface, its growth and movement fuelled by continuous , unrelenting snowfall. This great earth shaper sculptured the underlying landscapes for tens of thousands of years untill something happened which brought about the melting of the ice and the receding of the ice sheets,around ten thousand years ago.

A slight change in the earths orbit around the sun, and a new wobble in its axis of spin all contributed to a change in climate and the resulting end of an ice age. On the earths surface a new landscape began to reveal itself as the ice melted. Hollows and depressions left behind by the glaciers, became islands of standing water, and oases for new life. Thousands of years passed, and one such hollow became a small vegetation fringed lake. A more recent colonist Homo sapiens,used the lake as a source of freshwater and gave the surrounding lands a name. They called it the Bog of the Ring.

It was on the edge of this lake, at dawn, on a particularly cold and frosty winters morning three young men crouched in silence. They were camouflaged among the brown heads of bullrush and golden reed mace. To a casual observer the only indication of their presence was a freezing mist which formed from their exhaled breaths. They did not speak, as their intention was silence, and to blend in with their surroundings in the hope that the lake would reveal its true nature to them.

They had come to observe a migrant flock of diving duck, that frequented the lake each winter, quite possibly reenacting a scene that had been acted out by their ancestors over hundreds of years. As keen naturalists, they had come to know,that patience with nature, could be rewarded with some jewel of intimacy with her wild creatures.This day was to present the young men with one of these special experiences.

The surface of the lake was clear and smooth,mirroring the clouds overhead, and a winterlight played on the bullrush fringes. Occasional rays of sunshine stippled the lake surface, danced among the reed mace stems and over the diving duck feeding on the lake. Individual ducks dived only to pop up innocently again,swimming along as if they had never disappeared below the surface. As the naturalists watched,they noticed a wariness spread throughout the flock, with birds calling nervously, and flicking their upright tails.

As if on cue, the flat ,squat ,whiskered face of an otter appeared out of the lake surface, only meters away from where the naturalists lay in hiding. The water dog held a pale yellow squirming three foot eel in his jaws,and made directly for the lake bank where the observers were waiting with baited breath. There were audible, crushing and crunching sounds as otter chewed feverishly on the tough sinous body of the eel, within a hairs breath of the watchers. Far from giving up, the eel , entwinned and wrapped itself rigorously around the otters webbed and clawed feet.

In a flash one of the young men made a decision to jump up and claim the otters prize. The otter was gone and back in the lake before the human grabbed the contorting eel, and stunned it with a sharp blow to the head, and to the hissing of an annoyed territorial swan and a bemused otter the three men departed the lake with their prize.

Later that morning in the warmth of a cosy kitchen, an old iron pan was placed on a hot stove. Oil was added to the pan and finger length wriggling portions of fresh eel were dropped in to cook. Comically, the eel pieces continued to squirm, even as they sizzled in the hot oil. Three plates were set at table and the would be hunter gatherers, sat down to partake of natures bounty and raise a toast to the otters gift.

Authors Notes

The Otter                                          Lutra lutra

Solitary, mainly nocturnal animal. Rare , but can be seen on more isolated waterways and coastal regions.

The Eel                                        Anguilla anguilla

Migratory animal. Origins. The Sargasso sea. A region of ocean in the North Atlantic. Wild populations seriously under threat.

Human                                    Homo sapiens

Intelligent social animal. Huge population. Has a tendency towards self destruction. Holds the future existence of both the above mentioned animals in its hands.