ALERT BAY, B.C. — After looking beyond the crowd gathered at the marina, Robin Quirk saw what seemed like a wet sock on the dock. Robin raced over to what turned out to be a baby river otter. “I just moved,” Robin says. “There is no hesitation you just help.” Robin gathered random materials lying nearby to build a shelter to protect the animal from the birds of prey she usually rescues, before hearing what had Gordon Mellish had done before she got there. “There were three otters in the water, wrapped in a fishing net,” Gordon says. “The third was wrapped so bad, it was motionless and his head was hanging in the water.” After Gordon spent 20 minutes pulling the tangled trio out of the ocean, he cut the first two free, before returning to the third who wasn’t moving. “It didn’t look like it was going to survive,” Gordon says. “But you’ve got to try. So that’s what I did.” The retired logger and fisherman did what he had done to 10 humans before—but never to an otter. “Gave the heart a little pump and nothing was going on, so I grabbed it and picked it up,” Gordon says, demonstrating how he kneeled on the dock to perform CPR on the baby otter. “I wrapped my mouth around its mouth and nose and gave it a breath of life.” After the baby started breathing on its own, Robin took over. Following expert advice, she cared for the otter in her car overnight, before taking a ferry and driving to the wild animal rescue centre. “You know how if you can’t get your baby to sleep, you take it for a drive?” Robin smiles. “Well, the otter slept the whole way.” And the like a mother might sing her baby a lullaby, Robin would whistle to the otter. “It’s a maternal feeling,” Robin says, whistling the melody she made up. “You’re responsible for this life.” After driving the otter to the wild animal rescue, the baby spent a week being rehabilitated. Then, Robin picked the baby up and met with Gordon to release it back into the wild. “Before (the otter) went to go swim away, she turned back (and) looked at me,” Gordon smiles. “We made eye to eye contact and then (she) swam away.” They didn’t see the pup again until someone sent Robin a video of some otters around the area. She rushed down to where it was recorded and started whistling that melody from the car. “I hear a rushing of water and then I looked down and there was this little otter looking up,” Robin says. “I said, ‘Oh, buddy! You’re alone.’” But then, all of a sudden, a second baby otter appeared, then a third, followed by their mom. “And I went, ‘Oh man! We did it!,’” Robin smiles. “We reunited the family!” By saying “we,” Robin is acknowledging the more than a dozen other people not mentioned in this story who also stepped up to support the baby otter along the way, as well as Gordon, who brought it back to life with his breath. “A life’s a life no matter what it is,” Gordon smiles. “Try to do your best to save it.”
