Wastefulness!

We live in a "throwaway" society.  Most folks think nothing of tossing items instead of reusing them.  Also, most folks waste food on a daily basis. I have this thing about wastefulness.  Granddad used to always tell me "Better save that..you might need it one day!"   I passed this along to my kids and pushed them to not be wasteful.  To this day, it makes me cringe when I see things being tossed that might come in handy.

 It is a rare thing for one of Mother Nature's critters to be wasteful.  For most wild critters, food is hard to come by and is definitely not considered to be inedible just because it is a day or two old!  So it was a surprise when I found food left behind after some serious foraging.  On the pier, thirty or so nice, plump bull minnows were left to rot.  Some critter had caught more than it could eat and wasted the rest.  Why did the animal keep catching the little fish if its belly was already full?  Perhaps it was just the thrill of the catch.

I suspect the critter in question was none other than one of the otters that live in the marsh.  Time and time again, this otter will kill masses of little fish with no intention of eating them. My brother has told me of times when the critter will raid the bait wells of his boat and merely lay all of the minnows out to die.  The otter does not eat them, he just kills them.  I wonder if seeing the bull minnows trapped in the wells triggers some instinctual desire to catch the prey.  The same could be what caused the otter to catch the minnows left on the pier.  Low tide most likely trapped a good many minnows in small tide pools under the pier.  The otter had easy pickings so a frenzy occurred.

I was surprised that one of the many seagulls had not discovered this treasure trove of free food.  The minnows were all laid out on the pier in full view of the "not-so-picky-about-what-they-eat" gulls.  Granted by the time I found the minnows, they were rather, ummm, stiff but I do not think that would have bothered one of the gulls or even a raccoon.  They are not above eating someone else's leftovers!  Now the problem..how am I ever going to convince that otter to stop wasting food??