Otto is back!

Last night I put a Rockling at the entrance to Otto's holt, just incase he came back and needed some nourishment. I put sand around the area to check for footprints in the morning. I tied the door open and went to bed. This morning I checked and the fish was gone! Otto had been back during the night and proved it by leaving his five toed paw prints in the sand.

I set off looking for him up the burn and down to the beach calling his name as I went. No sign of him anywhere.There were some otter tracks at the bay but they could have been from a wild otter.

I repeated the procedure tonight and left another fish. I'm just back in and pleased to say that Otto has returned!
At first he seemed different, a bit wilder. He had scoffed the rockling so I gave him some cat food as I have no fish defrosted. He seemed very hungry and scoffed the lot. We had a play in the dark until I had had enough of the rain. I closed the enclosure door and came in to get dried off.

An Otters digestive system works very fast, so they really need to eat regularly. He will have to learn to catch his own food now that he is out and about...or go hungry. If he does decide to go wild again then all I can really do is leave fish out for his return. Tonight showed me that he will return when hungry. As long as I keep putting food out then he will not starve. He is now eating about 3lb of fish per day!

I'll check on him again in an hour or so and see if he is still there or not. Perhaps not, now that he has had two full days and a full night out in the wilderness. Maybe he will scale the fence like he did two nights ago...if so, thats fine.

Otto is back!

I checked ... he is still there.