After looking beyond the crowd gathered at the Alert Bay Boat Harbor on Cormorant Island in British Columbia, Canada, Robin Quirk (inset below) saw what looked like a wet sock on the dock. She raced over to what turned out to be a baby river otter. That’s when 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 Gordon Mellish (inset below) had done before she got there. He explained that there were three otters in the water, wrapped in a fishing net. One of the three was wrapped so badly that it was motionless and its 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, but you’ve got to try, so that’s what I did,” explained Gordon. The retired logger and fisherman did what he had done to 10 humans before, but never to an otter. He wrapped his mouth around the otter’s mouth and began performing CPR. 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 center. Like a mother might sing her baby a lullaby, Robin began to whistle lullabies to the otter. 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 swim away, it turned and looked at Gordon. “A life’s a life no matter what it is,” Gordon said.
