Otters

Otters are playful animals. They often slide down muddy creek banks over and over, apparently just for the fun of it.

Asian Short-Clawed River Otter Plays with a Rock
Photographic Print by Duplaix, Nicole Buy at AllPosters.com

Otters are associated with magic and healing in many of the cultures that live near them.

Otters in North America

In the early 1990s I attended a sweat lodge led by an elder of the Sac and Fox people (Native American), who was then in his late sixties. He told us that traditionally Sak and Fox women, grandmothers, were the healers and that they used otter skins for healing.

His grandmother would take poeple into the sweat lodge and work with an otter skin to heal them. It was said that the otter came alive, and he said you could hear its calls.

His grandmother was a noted healer in her community, but he said that to his knowledge she was one of the last of the grandmother healers using otter skins. The practice seemed to have died out after her generation.

River Otters, Yellowstone Lake Photographic Print
by Rosing, Norbert Buy at AllPosters.com