Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

It’s time for the GOP to dust off that post-2012 autopsy, completely ignore it, and light the party on fire again.

If senate republicans had any shame, they’d die of it.

Let’s delete this post and never speak of this again.

It may be funny to you motherfucker, but it’s not funny to me.

And now I have baud making fun of me. this day can’t get worse.

I really should read my own blog.

We are aware of all internet traditions.

Authoritarian republicans are opposed to freedom for the rest of us.

Let me eat cake. The rest of you could stand to lose some weight, frankly.

Roe isn’t about choice, it’s about freedom.

Usually wrong but never in doubt

Not so fun when the rabbit gets the gun, is it?

You can’t love your country only when you win.

We are builders in a constant struggle with destroyers. let’s win this.

Black Jesus loves a paper trail.

Yeah, with this crowd one never knows.

But frankly mr. cole, I’ll be happier when you get back to telling us to go fuck ourselves.

The cruelty is the point; the law be damned.

The GOP is a fucking disgrace.

Let us savor the impending downfall of lawless scoundrels who richly deserve the trouble barreling their way.

A snarling mass of vitriolic jackals

People are complicated. Love is not.

So it was an October Surprise A Day, like an Advent calendar but for crime.

T R E 4 5 O N

You are here: Home / Politics / America / Late Evening Open Thread: Floriduh! Otter Strikes Again… Wait, What?

Late Evening Open Thread: Floriduh! Otter Strikes Again… Wait, What?

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This was otterly horrible!

From The Tampa Bay Times:

For Marsha Wikle, it should have been a typical Sunday afternoon, paddling downstream along the Braden River in Manatee County.

Wikle said she was taking in the sights, leading a kayaking excursion in a “very quiet section” of the river, when they encountered something familiar to many visiting Florida’s freshwater areas: a river otter.

But this was no ordinary otter.

The rogue — and possibly rabid — animal attacked a 77-year-old Sarasota woman. It also menaced the kayakers as they attempted to make their way on shore. And that wasn’t the only otter attack reported this weekend on the river, which is east of Interstate 75.

The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission is investigating a second attack in which two individuals were bitten by an otter the day before, on Saturday, two miles from Wikle’s encounter.

The otter also was reported to be chasing boats and acting aggressive, according to FWC.

Witnesses also told FWC that an otter also came into contact with an alligator after the attacks on Sunday and suffered injuries.

FWC spokeswoman Melody Kilborn said a search for the otter is ongoing. Agency employees also have placed flyers at two boat ramps along the river to warn visitors of the aggressive otter.

River otter attacks are rare, Kilborn said, and no such attacks were reported last year.

Samantha Wisely, an associate professor at the University of Florida’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences, said the animal’s behavior makes rabies the most likely cause of its aggression.

“Its behavior strongly suggests it was rabid,” Wisely said. “Healthy otters would never attack people.”

Mike Terrell, director of husbandry for the Florida Aquarium, warned boaters to practice caution when seeing animals in the wild.

Given that it is still technically winter, it could be a Kushtaka, the Alaskan Otterman, down in Florida for the winter as a snowbird:

The Tlingit and Tsimshian peoples, indigenous inhabitants of the Pacific Northwest Coast of the United States and Southeastern Alaska, have a robust folklore surrounding a mythical and maniacal trickster race called the Kushtaka, which roughly translates as “land otter people”, a shape-shifting species of otter that is rumored to spend a lot of its time trying to lure unsuspecting humans away from their homes in order to turn them into more Kushtaka (which in Tlingit folklore basically amounts to preventing us from achieving reincarnation and consequent everlasting life).  Sometimes they don’t bother, and simply tear a victim to shreds. Not cool.  Bad otter.

(Tlingit otter carving)

Stay frosty! And DON’T feed the otters!

Open thread.

Reader Interactions

122Comments

  1. 1.

    JCJ

    Yikes!

    In other animal news there has been a cougar in my leafy suburb outside of Milwaukee. Someone caught it on a surveillance video looking in their picture window.

  4. 4.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    Samantha Wisely, an associate professor at the University of Florida’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences, said the animal’s behavior makes rabies the most likely cause of its aggression.

    That’s what I wondered about when I heard this story. Rabies, or Silverman was training attack otters

    • Get into fights w/ alligators

    So next up is rabid gators? (can reptiles get rabies?)

  8. 8.

    Wag

    an otter also came into contact with an alligator after the attacks on Sunday and suffered injuries.

    If the otter suffered injuries, I would assume that the alligator did as well. Does anyone have any idea whether alligators are susceptible to rabies? A rabid alligator would be a nightmare scenario in my book.

  9. 9.

    Corner Stone

    This seems like a silly gag post. With all that’s going on, don’t you have some otter important topic to write about?

  11. 11.

    smintheus

    Jimmy Carter’s re-election was badly undermined when he was attacked while canoeing fishing by a rabid rabbit. The news media took their cues from Republicans and mocked Carter for being weak and feckless…for fending off a rabid animal. The making of this national political miasma began decades ago. We shouldn’t forget how long our media has been more or less this pathetic.

    Edited for truth.

  16. 16.

    debbie

    @Wag:

    I can’t imagine the otter would have punctured the alligator’s skin, and if the alligator had bit the otter, it likely wouldn’t have survived.

  20. 20.

    Corner Stone

    @JCJ:

    In other animal news there has been a cougar in my leafy suburb outside of Milwaukee.

    Let me know if I can give you my number to slip to her one day.

  21. 21.

    Sab

    @Wag: Yes it is. I have been lurking all day because I can’t bear to think about, much less comment about him. The front pagers are tougher folks than I am.

  23. 23.

    Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD)

    @Sab: I read somewhere that birds can survive contracting the disease, and that at any rate its (apparently) not being universally fatal in the wild has gone unstudied. (The only documented case of an untreated rabies patient surviving was last decade, with the “Texas Wild Child.”)

  26. 26.

    Sab

    @Adam L Silverman: I only went to elementary school there, half a century ago. Still had a large impact, but I never saw a river otter. Only porpoises and sea cows. Never heard of them rabid. Nor the alligators. The wild hogs were rare but terrifying. I loved our neighborhood indigo snake who scared off all the rattlers. And clapper rail birds were very cool.

  28. 28.

    Corner Stone

    @Sab:

    Never heard of them rabid. Nor the alligators

    How would one tell the difference between a gator and a rabid gator?

  29. 29.

    Mike J

    There was a renegade otter at America lake just south of Tacoma last year? Two years ago?

    And of course my standard complain about them being poop machines.

  36. 36.

    Sab

    @Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD): That’s intetesting about birds. If I remember correctly, two American human children have survived rabies. One was a little boy who had previously been innoculated. The more recent case was a teenage girl who was put into a long induced coma.

  37. 37.

    p.a.

    @Gin & Tonic:

    Just Looking At Otters… A North Kingstown woman was arrested recently after police connected to Davisville Elementary School. When police pulled over the SUV, the driver allegedly told them she was just on the way to the store with her passenger to get “pickles and buns.” When police told her they saw her drive on the bike path, the woman explained that she and the passenger went there to “relax” and look at “otters.” The driver was charged with driving on a suspended license. The passenger was charged with possession after police found marijuana in the SUV.

    ETA: the “s are from the article, not me snarking.

  42. 42.

    Corner Stone

    @JCJ: Oh, man. She is totally hot! You can tell by the way she almost attacks the image of herself in the glass reflection that she’s just looking for someone who gets her. I am totally there for her.

  44. 44.

    Gin & Tonic

    @p.a.: That’s the first time I’ve seen “pickles and buns” used that way, but I think I know what she means.

    I saw a river otter near me one time, when I was walking the dog. There’s a handful of freshwater wetlands.

  45. 45.

    Betty Cracker

    From what I’m reading on Twitter, Trump gave a really bonkers speech at a rally for the nonentity Conor Lamb will hopefully defeat on Tuesday. Made racist remarks, bellowed absurd claims, shouted bloodthirsty remarks, etc. The candidate got short shrift, from the accounts I’ve read. Trump made it all about himself as usual. ?

  48. 48.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    Patrick S. Tomlinson @ stealthygeek
    We’re letting a man who couldn’t successfully pay off a porn star negotiate with a nuclear-armed North Korea.

    in other Stormy news…

    Groucho @ Stewey444
    StormyDaniels please run for office in 2020, preferably for the Republican nomination for President.

    Stormy Daniels @ StormyDaniels
    Fuck no! That’s a dirtier job than the one I already have…guessing far less orgasms, too.

  49. 49.

    Sab

    @Betty Cracker: My 93 year old dad with somewhat severe dementia loved it, until at some point Trump lost his interest, so he turned the TV off and went to bed.

    He won’t be voting in May or November, because no one has any intention of helping him to the polls. A week or two later he will ask about the election and we will tell him he already voted.Hope that isn’t illegal.

  50. 50.

    Corner Stone

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    Stormy Daniels @ StormyDaniels
    Fuck no! That’s a dirtier job than the one I already have…guessing far less orgasms, too.

    I, for one, would welcome a set amount of “executive time” each day for President Stormy Daniels.

  51. 51.

    JCJ

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    Well, the Milwaukee Lion of 2017 was seen at 41st and Capitol. This video was from around 135th Street a little north of Capitol. Maybe he was just passing through on the way to his old stomping grounds.
    A few years a go there was a bear in Wauwatosa at 114th and Burleigh in a business park

  52. 52.

    Corner Stone

    I haven’t spoken to one of my lifelong RWNJ friends in two years or so. He used to literally, no bullshit, carry around a pocket sized version of the Constitution with him everywhere during the Bill Clinton sexcapades. I honestly wonder what he’s thinking now but at the same time have been unable to ring him up to find out.
    Rule of Law! Rule of Law! Rule of Law!

  62. 62.

    LaNonna

    We saw Black Panther while here in Cape Town, what a great experience. Choice of 2 or 3D, good chairs and sound system ( you can tell we don’t get out to the movie theater in rural Puglia, because there isn’t one), loved the film. Just beautiful and satisfying.

    Water the BIG issue, drove out to look at the reservoir and it is dire, at least 5 years of steady seasonal rains to refill it. Doing our bit, along with our Capetonian friends, less laundry, hand sanitizer, baby wipes instead of daily showers, refilling bottles with recycled ozone water, etc.

  65. 65.

    Sab

    @Patricia Kayden: Apparently if you get shots promptly you will probably be OK. Still strikes me as scary rather than funny. But I am closer to 79 than to 40. Us olds have no sense of humor. How big are river otter teeth? I have never seen one.

  69. 69.

    GxB

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    Stormy Daniels @ StormyDaniels
    Fuck no! That’s a dirtier job than the one I already have…guessing far less orgasms, too.

    Well she’d be a poor Republican in the current environment anyway. Speculating here but Ryan, McConnell, and all the other misanthropic shitheads have probably rubbed out quite a few above their average over the past year or so.

    You can thank me for that mental image by not interacting with the new “schtick” troll about. Something about him/her seems awfully familiar and I’m certain they’re an old, oft banned moran trying a new, and admittedly novel, approach.

  70. 70.

    Sab

    I am still hoping for a front page open thread Black Panther sometime when many jackals have finaly dragged themselves to the theater to see it ( waiting for the grammer purists.)

  72. 72.

    James E. Powell

    @LaNonna:

    I saw it this afternoon. It was a sound system called Titan Luxe and it was pretty good. They ran a demo of it before the film started with a variety of sounds. If I could get the surround sound rainfall in my bedroom I might have a cure for my chronic insomnia.

    The film was as good as everyone said it was. I always wait to see the big ones because I don’t like crowded theaters. Apparently I should have waited a bit longer. The theater was full.

  75. 75.

    Corner Stone

    @Sab:

    I am still hoping for a front page open thread Black Panther sometime when many jackals have finaly dragged themselves to the theater to see it

    It just barely cracked a $1B in ticket sales! Give us some space, for Wakanda sake!

  76. 76.

    Jay

    @Sab:

    Depends on the species of otter and where. Here, River Otter’s have half in canines, Florida, probably an inch, ( dog sized), Brazil, Giant River Otters, 3 to 4 inches.

  78. 78.

    Sab

    @?BillinGlendaleCA: Yikes. I have been bit by several dogs but they all had their shots.

    Years ago cats didn’t need to get shots but dogs did. Always struck me as weird. My dog doesn’t run loose but if he bit me I’d ask “what’s wrong with you? ” My cat runs wild and eats rodents and fights with every other wild animal out there, and when he bites me I say ” he’s just being a cat”.

  79. 79.

    Ken

    @Corner Stone:

    How would one tell the difference between a gator and a rabid gator?

    And would it be any more dangerous than telling the difference between a crocodile and an alligator?

    (Something to do with the way one of its many teeth is positioned. I’m not sure of the details because what’s the point, I’m never getting that close to either. It’s like that poem for coral versus king snake – black on red you’re dead, red on yellow kill a fellow, whatever; I’m not planning to pick one up.)

  82. 82.

    Sab

    @Ken: when I was a kid in Florida, neighbors killed off a king snake in their bomb shelter. Aside from being a useless killiing of a harmless snake, kingsnakes also run off rattlers. So their ignorance made their shelter more dangeroua. Idiots.

  83. 83.

    ? Martin

    I think I know why I like the Paralympics better than the Olympics – the commentary is better and the athlete profiles are more informational rather than trying to build drama.

  84. 84.

    Ken

    @Sab: Brazil rivers are nothing compared to Brazil nuts. Those things can kill you dead.

    (That wedge shape is because there’s two dozen of them packed like an orange, inside a cannonball-sized four-pound seed pod that grows, and falls from, a hundred feet or more in the air.)

  85. 85.

    NotMax

    @Ken

    Like the peanut, the walnut and the cashew they aren’t true nuts either.

    Trivia: Most Brazil nuts come from Bolivia.

  86. 86.

    CaseyL

    @Ken:

    That wedge shape is because there’s two dozen of them packed like an orange, inside a cannonball-sized four-pound seed pod that grows, and falls from, a hundred feet or more in the air.

    A nut tree that can kill you? OK, Brazil is South America’s answer to Australia.

  87. 87.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Ken: they also take up room in the mixed nut can that could be taken up by good nuts

    also, too

    @ thehill
    Megyn Kelly: I think Putin has something on Trump

  88. 88.

    Corner Stone

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    they also take up room in the mixed nut can that could be taken up by good nuts

    So true. I hate getting the mixed nuts bowl on an airplane and find it to be 50%+ Brazil nuts.

  89. 89.

    Sab

    @Ken: Wow. So like a machine gun version of cashews. We never see cashews with shells in the store because they ate related to poison ivy, and you need hazmat suits to peel them.

    So brazil nuts in their native environment are explosive.I think I’ll stick to pecans and walnuts..

  92. 92.

    NotMax

    @Sab

    And whence did cashews originate?

    Brazil.

    Workers who shell cashews in Goa on the Indian sub-continent suffer much because they are not provided protective gear and cannot afford to purchase it on their own.

  94. 94.

    jl

    I think raw Brazil nuts are great, much more, and better, flavor, than roasted. Which is the opposite of any other nut I can think of. I don’t know why anyone bothers to roast them. Any Brazil nut skeptics should try a bag or raw ones.

  96. 96.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Ken:

    IIRC, this is military for “Why yes, yes I am.

    I can neither confirm nor deny this either at this time.

  98. 98.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Ken: If I recall correctly, Brazil nuts also accumulate selenium and radium to the point that it’s probably not safe to eat more than few of them a day–the latter makes them one of the most radioactive foods you can buy.

  100. 100.

    ? Martin

    @Sab: I missed my calling. I’m not allergic to poison ivy. My stepfather is wickedly allergic – he’d break out if the pollen blew past him from a plant 100 meters away. So, my job would be to go in the forest behind our house and rip out all of the poison ivy I could find. The first year I did it I went through an entire box of large trash bags. But I can handle it bare handed, rub my face after, etc. Never broke out. But put me near a cat – I’ll practically stop breathing.

  102. 102.

    Ken

    @Adam L Silverman: For some reason, now I’m remembering Wild Kingdom. Each episode Marlin Perkins would explain some fascinating fact about that week’s animal, then they’d cut to the safari footage. Invariably Marlin was in the vehicle filming, while his assistant was the one out looking for cobras in the tall grass or taking the rectal temperature of a hyena.

  103. 103.

    ? Martin

    BTW, the US is really good at creating paralympians. Among the male athletes, seems like most of them are here thanks to an IED.

  104. 104.

    Jay

    @Sab:

    River Otters are cute, and they are a keystone species. They were hunted to extinction in most of the world, for their fur, only a few species survived.

    Having fished all my life, I like otters.

  107. 107.

    Origuy

    @? Martin:

    I’m not allergic to poison ivy.

    Neither am I, but I’m still careful. I know of people who didn’t react at all to poison oak or ivy, until they got exposed in just the right way. Then they got a nasty surprise.
    Then I’ve known other people who got a rash from cheap lacquer. Japanese lacquer is made from the urushi tree, which is related to poison oak and ivy. The active allergen is called urushinol. If it’s not done right, there’s some of the allergen left in the lacquer.

  110. 110.

    Adam L Silverman

    @PsiFighter37: Based on the coverage I’ve read on the President’s rally, I have no idea. If the polling is correct that it is essentially within the margin of error, anything could happen. The question is going to be whether the President’s appearance tonight motivates more people to turn out for Saccone that would’ve been staying home as a positive reaction to the President and his remarks or more people to turn out for Lamb as a negative reaction to the President and his remarks at the rally.

  113. 113.

    NotMax

    @Ken

    “While Jim runs from the charging rhino, it’s a good time to remind you that Mutual of Omaha offers you shelter wherever you are.”

  116. 116.

    Sm*t Cl*de

    @Wag:

    Does anyone have any idea whether alligators are susceptible to rabies?

    Nope. I know this because of mad scientist experiments reasons.
    Birds can contract rabies but can’t spread it because of having no salivary glands.
    Since birds= dinosaurs I guess rabid velociraptors are possible.

    @Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD):

    at any rate its (apparently) not being universally fatal in the wild has gone unstudied.

    Bats seem to survive with rabies quite happily, and become carriers.

  117. 117.

    lowtechcyclist

    But this was no ordinary otter.

    TIM THE ENCHANTER: This is no ordinary otter…that’s the most foul, cruel, and bad-tempered rodent you ever set eyes on! Look, that otter’s got a vicious streak a mile wide! It’s a killer!

  118. 118.

    Brachiator

    FWC spokeswoman Melody Kilborn said a search for the otter is ongoing. Agency employees also have placed flyers at two boat ramps along the river to warn visitors of the aggressive otter.

    People otter know better than to mess with these creatures.

  120. 120.

    evodevo

    @smintheus: Yes. At the time, I didn’t laugh… swamp rabbits are larger and more aggressive than their bunny counterparts in the suburbs AND rabbits can bite the crap out of you, and it’s quite likely it wasn’t even rabid … just pissed off, OR escaping a gator. city people have NO idea …

  122. 122.

    SWMBO

    @Ken: Marlin would be in the studio with a cute Orangatan or something. “Does your Orangatan burn? Then you need Mutual of Omaha’s fire policy!” He would be the one in the vehicle “Jim, go circumcise that polar bear!” Marlin was more the adventurous spectator.

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