Killer otter suspected in swan deaths in Orlando’s Lake Eola | Commentary

I’ve always liked otters.

They’re curious, resourceful, social and have cute little faces with big noses that are so endearing, many kids want stuffed-animal versions.

Basically, they’re adorable.

However, otters can also be something else — killers. They can jump out of the water, sink their canines into your neck, drag you down into the depths of the water until you drown and then eat the brain right out of your cranium. If you’re a bird anyway.

That part is significantly less adorable.

Yet that’s precisely what city officials say happened last week when a river otter somehow made its way into Lake Eola and slaughtered two of the city’s iconic swans — Australian black swans, to be precise. Plus a duck to boot.

“Nature’s gonna happen,” said Eola Park Manager Quincy Richardson. “And it happens out here.”

Richardson and I were standing at the scene of the crime Wednesday morning when he fished in his pocket for his cellphone to share video of the otter, looking all cute and cuddly, snuggled up against a tree trunk, gnawing on a snack.

That’s when Richardson explained that the snack was one of his swan’s heads.

It was the least cute thing I’d ever seen an otter do.

Richardson said he’d never seen an otter in Orlando’s iconic downtown park until this one appeared last week. His best guess is that it somehow snuck in through one of the underground waterways.

And for a few days, parkgoers enjoyed watching the otter frolic on the banks of the lake. The frolicking, however, ended when Richardson got a call from someone who said: “I think the otter we’ve been observing has been eating our swans.”

One carcass showed up, along with a duck’s. Then there was the second swan’s head, being gnawed on by the otter in a cove near Eola House. It was pretty compelling evidence that Lake Eola had a serial killer on its hands.

Richardson knew it was time to act. He called the state Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, county animal control and local trappers. “I was just calling everybody,” he said.

But the state wildlife guys said there wasn’t really anything they could do. The otter, after all, didn’t appear to be rabid. It was just doing what otters do.

As a side note, though, rabid otters are a real thing. Just ask the 74-year-old man from South Florida who said he was feeding ducks behind his Jupiter home last year when what, at first, seemed like a cute-looking otter attacked him , sinking its teeth into the septuagenarian 41 times.

It sounds like being mauled by a Care Bear.

Anyway, even though the Eola otter was just doing natural otter things, this particular thing involved devouring the city’s signature birds, which seemed less than ideal.

So the city hired a trapper from Central Florida Wildlife Trapping who baited a few traps and managed to catch the culprit within 24 hours.

One witness said the otter cooed and whined at first, making observers feel bad. But then cooing turned to hissing and growling, the killer revealing his true nature.

As a state, Florida is fond of capital punishment. But Orlando officials were prone to agree with the wildlife experts who say you can hardly blame an otter for following its instincts.

So they released the little guy into the South Econlockhatchee River.

Actually, Mr. Park Manager, was it a guy?

“We didn’t check his otter parts,” he responded.

Fair enough.

Otters normally opt for smaller prey, like fish, frogs and even insects. But lately, there have been nationwide reports about otters attacking and devouring large birds in greater numbers — which is obviously a sign of an impending apocalypse.

Just a few months ago, wildlife experts in California reported that river otters there had developed “ a new taste for pelican ” and were taking out birds twice their size in serious numbers.

A documentarian who witnessed an attack described it like this: “One of the otters torpedoed out of the water, grabbed a pelican by its gular pouch, and held the bird’s head underwater until it drowned.” Your nightmares can thank me later.

If wild pelicans don’t stand much of a chance against vicious river otters, it’s easy to see why the slow, fat swans at Lake Eola wouldn’t fare well either.

Perhaps no one is fonder of the Eola swans than City Commissioner Patty Sheehan, who has become something of a mother hen to the famous fowl.

Sheehan said Wednesday that she was heartbroken when she learned about the two swan deaths, but also pragmatic enough to understand how the world works.

“Nature is sad,” she said, noting that Eola has previously lost cygnets (baby swans) to raccoons and great blue herons.

But never had the park lost fully grown swans to otters.  “Apparently once this otter got a taste for poultry, he wanted more,” Sheehan lamented.

The city has plans to boost the Eola swan population. Even before the serial-killing otter came along, the avian flu had taken out a few. Both Sheehan and the mayor’s office said they were working on plans to get another three couples.

I still think otters can be cute. But after witnessing the carnage at Eola — and watching the six-minute documentary, “ A Taste for Birds ” — I’m giving them a little more respect.

So is Park Manager Richardson, who said that, as far he’s concerned: “They are apex predators.”

smaxwell@orlandosentinel.com