The Otter
She found an otter in her garage. A short story.
There is an otter in her garage. She does not know how it got there. The garage door has been closed. This is what she keeps returning to: the closed door.
The otter is not distressed. It has found the camping cooler and is sitting beside it in a posture she can only describe as hopeful.
She calls her husband. He is in Denver at a conference about software. He asks if she is sure it is an otter. She says she is sure. He asks how she knows. She describes the shape of the face, the manner of the paws, the tail. He is quiet for a moment and then says he will look into flights.
She does not think it is necessary to look into flights.
She goes back to the garage and looks at the otter again. The otter looks at her. There is no hostility between them. She thinks: someone must be missing this otter. She thinks: the otter does not seem to know it is missing.
She realizes she knows almost nothing about otters. She is not sure if they are common or rare, whether finding one in a garage is the kind of thing that happens or the kind of thing that does not happen. She has no framework for this. She begins to wonder if it is actually an otter. But it is not a raccoon. She is certain of this. It is not a possum, not a cat, not a squirrel. She has ruled these out confidently and completely. Whatever it is, it is this.
She tries to imagine where it lives the rest of the time. She pictures a creek, something small and tree-lined, probably not far. A place with good banks. She imagines the otter knows everyone there — the particular rocks, the particular fish, the way the light comes in at a certain hour. She imagines it has, in some sense, a full life. This makes the garage seem worse than it did before, and then, for some reason, better.
She calls Animal Control. They put her on hold. While she is on hold she goes back to look at the otter a third time. The otter has opened the cooler. There are no longer any beers in the cooler. She does not think about this.
She hangs up.
Later she will tell people about the otter in her garage, about the closed door, about how it had such a particular way of sitting. People will ask what she did. She will have to explain that eventually it was just gone. She will say this as though it is a satisfying conclusion, which it is not.
The cooler is still in the garage. She has not moved it. She is not sure why she has not moved it.