Certain it is they
are rocked on the deep from their birth, "cradled" in the sea, sleeping
on their backs in the water, clasping the young in their arms like a
human being, tossing up seaweed in play by the hour like mischievous
monkeys, or crawling out on some safe, sea-girt rocklet, where they
shake the water from their fur and make their toilet, stretching and
arranging and rearranging hair like a cat. Only the fiercest gales
drive the sea-otter ashore, for it must come above water to breathe;
and it must come ashore to sleep where it _can_ breathe; for the ocean
wash in a storm would smother the sleeper. And its favorite sleeping
grounds are in the forests of kelp and seaweed, where it can bury its
head, and like the ostrich think itself hidden. A sound, a whiff--the
faintest tinge--of smoke from miles away is enough to frighten the
sleeper, who leaps up with a fierce courage unequalled in the animal
world, and makes for sea in lightning-flash bounds.
When Bering found the northwest coast of America, the sea-otter
frequented all the way from what is now California to the Commander
Islands, the last link of the chain from America to Asia.
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