We are running late. It’s already noon so we should expect to find people having lunch on the Eagle Landing Beach. The almost full trailhead parking lot almost assure of running into someone on the trail. But we are the first dogs or humans to reach the beach where a brace of merganser ducks sunbathes. 

            The ducks must be stunned by the sun because they don’t stir even after we break out of the woods. The female is the first to notice the little dog and I. Without rising to her feet, she wakes up her mate with a squawk. The drake, with his chest nestled into the beach gravel and his head raised to the sun, still won’t move. Only when the hen stomps off toward the water does he rise. 

            It’s a treat to walk on a beach untracked since last night’s high tide. We only find the tracks of the mergansers and one deer. Aki and I make parallel tracks on the beach before returning to the woods. The trail leads across a little headland to another pocket beach. Just offshore a land otter fishes. He quickly disappears, perhaps into another forested headland. We cross that one two, finding not a land otter but plenty of evidence of its presence. Empty sea urchin shells litter the mossy floor. Near one such a shell pile, I discover a folding pad, the kind that cross country skiers sit on during coffee breaks. Seeing it detritus, I carry away the pad. At home, I find a ring of bite marks left by the otter that carrying into its keep.

        Aki waits in the woods as I scramble over some rocks to the outfall of a salt chuck. At extreme high tide, salt water flows over the outfall and into the small lake that it drains. That’s why it’s called a salt chuck. Steel head trout and three different types of salmon climb the outfall rocks on their way to the spawning grounds. This morning here might be some fall run steel head moving into the lake. 

         Turning, I scan the lake and spot a heron on the far shore. From here it could be a piece of driftwood. But my camera lens confirms it to be a great blue heron. While I spy on the heron with the camera, a river otter pokes it head into the frame. It acts as surprised as I feel, rising high into the air and then crash diving beneath the lake’s surface.  By now Aki is standing by my side. The little dog starts barking and wagging her tail.

          The otter returns, this time with a friend for back up. Now two otters swirl nearby in the lake, occasionally lifting their heads high above the large. They make a chuffing sound. Aki responds with more barking. In the past, when trying to coax Aki into the water, otters had made a chirping sound. Today’s chuffing seems designed to intimidate rather than seduce. 

         Otters are at home on land as well as in water. As they slowly close the distance between themselves and Aki, I snatch up the little poodle-mix and carry her away. She may have meant her barks to be inviting. The otters were acting as if she was challenging them to a fight. Since they outweighed the little dog by at least two to one, it would be a fight that the poodle could not win.