Farewell to Dawn, Farewell to Dusk

I’m cycling to the post office on Tuesday, Reuben riding shotgun in the basket in front, and I see what appears to be a black cat dead on the road. A close inspection reveals it to be a beautiful, sleek little otter. Apart from its eyes, which still register shock, it is completely unmarked, its velvety dark brown body perfect. I move its stiff body off the road, and on the way back it’s still in the grassy verge where I leave it. I use the toe of my shoe to gently hoof it off into the grass: my parents brought me up never to touch a dead animal. I phone Marcel (husband) and Paddy (son) to come and have a look.

“You’re unlikely ever to see an otter at such close quarters again,” I say.

They both arrive within a couple of minutes. Marcel looks at the little brown shape in the grass.

“Its paws are just like a dog’s,”: he says. “I am so very sad.”

Paddy feigns nonchalance.

I decide to come back and sketch it. Within half an hour I am perched on a tiny stool, SketchPocket beside me on the grass. I draw and paint for over an hour, unwilling to leave. All kinds of thoughts of loss run through my body.

My brother-in-law Ian, a passionate naturalist, who would have been delighted to experience this vicariously.

My father, Paddy Sr., who had nothing whatsoever to do with otters, but whom I loved so dearly that any thought of death makes me think of my loss of him and start weeping afresh.

Before I leave, I stroke the little creature, deciding that since I am a grown up now I can assess risk on my own. To my surprise and further sadness, it is still warm. It must have only just been hit when I encountered it. My drawings aren’t great, but I feel I have discharged a certain duty by putting the little fellow in my sketchbook.

When I get home I ask Chat GPT to identify the animal. Chat GPT is quick and confident in its answer: it is an American mink. I feed it another photo. American mink, it says, because of this identifying feature and that identifying feature. I am, unkindly, less sad: mink were introduced into Ireland in the 1950s in fur farms, and escaped into the wild, devouring everything in their path. They might have come to Ireland against their will, but they are a pest. Otters are Irish, and adorable. I post this online in one of the one-minute videos I post every day (which you’ll find on YouTube Shorts and Instagram, if you are in mindless-scroll-deficit) and a few knowledgable people tell me that Chat GPT is mistaken, that it is an otter. (A person on YouTube is sarcastic about my trust in AI, and I remind them that my channel is about positivity.) In my ignorance I stick to my guns, but just in case I look up feet, tail, ears, weight, face, markings and habits of minks and otters to help me with my identification. I end up even more confused.

Meanwhile I use the subject of otter vs. mink for my Wednesday illustration class (which you are welcome to join). I show the students how I design from first principles, starting with an idea, then making pencil sketches, then choosing a colour scheme, story and finally inking and painting. I am a little anxious about designing and drawing “live” and with no advance preparation, but the students, a gracious and willing bunch, are appreciative of watching the process from A to Z. I tell the students about my confusion over identification, and about my shifting emotions based on the animal’s species…

…so I decide to ask Gordon Darcy, our world-renowned naturalist down the road. He is the author of a great many books on the Burren and lots of special wild places from his global travels. Gordon tells me it is a juvenile male otter. He refers to its weight and colour, and it makes sense. As I read the email from Gordon, I call across our open-plan house.

“Time to be sad again!” I say. “It’s an otter.”

“Aw!” says Marcel. “I am sad again.”

Paddy says he still doesn’t care.

(This would be the same Paddy who ran into the house aged 11 telling me there were baby hares outside. The Paddy who chased off the rook who had come to take the baby hares, seeing it off so fast even I didn’t see what was happening. The Paddy whose first self-penned story was called Patrick and the Spider, about a little boy and his friend who is a spider – the same size as Patrick, incidentally – who play together, eat together and sleep in bunkbeds one above the other. Paddy, who wrote a long-running series of comics about a sweet bumblebee called Ben-Di-Diddly-Doo.)

And I am indeed very sad. Is it the recent bereavements in my life that has me so unwilling to accept this death? My mother is with me for a few days, but the day before she leaves, with fifteen minutes to go before class, I jump in the car and retrieve the animal. I put the beautiful, still-perfect animal in a shopping bag – double-bagged for hygiene – and bring it to my studio.

Now what?

Gordon has asked me if I intend to have the animal stuffed. I mentio this in one of my videos.

“If you stuff it, can I have it?” asks my similarly-fascinated daughter Honor. One of Honor’s earliest drawings was an accurate drawing of a vole. She has written DEAD VOLE above the animal. I consider stuffing the animal and giving it to Honor. My mother jokingly suggests making it into a pair of gloves? I say I am going to return it to nature. Marcel calls over from the kitchen.

“Can you keep the pelt, and return its innards to nature?” he asks.

I picture the animal being skinned, or disembowelled. Nope. Not on my watch. I have told no one about the animal in the shopping bag, which I have suspended from the owl door-chime outside my studio to keep it safe from rats. It occurs to me that it is undignified to leave an animal hoisted from a door-chime in a plastic bag, the garish red, blue and yellow colours of the bag a visual insult.

I decide what to do. I will return the animal, inviolate, to it natural home. I tell Marcel I will go to the far side of the river bank from where I found it, as it’s easier to access there.

“That’s hostile territory,” he says. “His people might come across his body and be upset.”

“They’ll have closure that way,” I reply.

Then Marcel suggests a place that’s easier to access, and on the right side of the river. Not only is it very close to the water’s edge, but it’s almost exactly where the animal was killed, and it’s a beautiful spot. A dreamscape. So I cycle out early on Sunday morning, a fine rain falling, and I hop over the gate into the field I have chosen. I lay the little darling on a bed of broken branches and twigs, close to a dry stone wall, a few yards from the water’s edge. No one ever goes there. I stroke its body softly, trying to keep a connection with it.

Then I make another illustration. Once again I encircle the otter in a wreath of spring flowers and his favourite foods of clams, mussels and trout. But this time I don’t include the mink. Instead, I write a poem for the otter.

I think about its short life, waking to the cold dawn to go and hunt, and frolicking at dusk, as I saw him or his kin the summer before. It’s perfect here all the time anyway, but it’s magical at dawn and dusk, and the otter had an unbroken run of these until that day when it made a fateful decision.

The poem consists of only four lines, as befitting a simple creature that lived a simple life.