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Books and Arts; Book Review;
Beguiling carnivores
A muse to poets, a mystery to scientists
Otter Country: In Search of the Wild Otter. By Miriam Darlington.
Written in prose as sinuous as the creatures themselves, “Otter Country” is a celebration of Britain's wild otters. These elusive animals have fascinated Miriam Darlington, a poet, since childhood, when she first read “Ring of Bright Water”, Gavin Maxwell's classic 1960 tale about living with otters. “Never mind the slippery reality it portrays,” she writes, “the spell of its otters took hold of me long ago and I still long to see one in the wild.”
《水獺國度》是部英國野生水獺的頌典，其散文式風格如水獺自身一般流轉(zhuǎn)。詩人米麗亞姆. 達林頓從她兒時第一次讀到《閃亮的水環(huán)》開始, 便對這種神秘動物非常著迷，這本書是加文·馬克斯韋爾20世紀60年代創(chuàng)作的經(jīng)典小說，講述的是一個與水獺共處的故事。“千萬不要介意其光滑的外在”她寫到，“水獺的魔力早已將我牢牢吸引，我現(xiàn)在仍然渴望能在野外看到水獺。”
This mesmerising book describes her year-long quest across Britain, from Devon to Scotland, Cumbria to Wales, through seductive wild places and changing seasons, for a glimpse of otters and to meet people who dedicate their lives to them.
這是一本讓人愛不釋手的書，描述了她在英國長達一年的搜尋水獺之旅，從德文郡到蘇格蘭，再從坎布里亞到威爾士，穿過魅人的原野，親歷季節(jié)變遷，就為一睹水獺容顏和遇到致力于水獺研究的人們。
The otter was one of the earliest carnivores. Its ancestral genus Mionictis, first roamed the Earth around 30m years ago. Thirteen species now thrive around the globe, barring Australia and Antarctica, but it is Lutra lutra, the European otter and Britain's only species, that is the object of Ms Darlington's passion.
水獺是最早出現(xiàn)的肉食動物之一，它的始祖是中新鼬獺，早在3千萬年以前，便開始游走于地球。現(xiàn)在的水獺共有13個品種，布滿全球各地，除澳大利亞和南極洲。然而達林頓女士鐘愛的只有歐亞水獺，它也是英國唯一的品種。
Otters have long fascinated man. Their nocturnal habits mean they are rarely seen—“otters give so little of themselves it's hard to know them,” Ms Darlington writes. Their “sublimely secretive” nature makes them a muse to poets and a mystery to scientists, who still have much to learn about these aquatic mammals. Their mischievous appearance belies their status as one of Britain's top predators.
人們所喜愛水獺為時已久。只是它們習慣夜間出沒，很少有機會讓人們看到。“水獺透露給人們的信息很少，要了解它們非常困難”達林頓這樣寫到。“無比神秘”的它們是詩人的靈感之源，也是科學家眼里的謎團，關(guān)于這些水族哺乳動物，還有很多東西等著他們?nèi)W習。淘氣的外表下掩藏的是它們作為英國頭等捕手的身份。
Seamus Heaney, Mary O'Malley and Ted Hughes have all devoted elegant doggerel to these creatures. Hughes is taken with the otter's “Underwater eyes, an eel's. Oil of water body”, the way it “Re-enters the water by melting”. Mr Heaney declares his love for an otter's “wet head and smashing crawl/Your fine swimmer's back and shoulders/Surfacing and surfacing again.” Ms Darlington's own lyrical prose is often beautifully evocative: a male otter is “supple as rope made out of silk”; a female swimming underwater moves in a “ripple-wake”; the “thin curves” of a mother and cub “slip together into the twilight, like fierce, muscled ribbons, darkening into the ribbon of the stream.”
謝默斯·希尼、瑪麗歐瑪列和泰德·休斯都曾為這些生靈寫過優(yōu)美的打油詩。休斯被水獺那“如鱔魚一般的水下眼睛，油般水靈的身軀”，和它那“化身返水”的方式深深吸引。希尼宣稱自己喜愛水獺“濕漉漉的腦袋和揮舞不停的爪子/你那如泳者般健美的肩背/一次一次浮出水面。”達林頓女士自己的詩詞常常讓人產(chǎn)生唯美的浮想：雄性水獺就像“絲繩般靈活”；水底潛游的雌水獺動起來就如“水波乍起”；水獺母親的和幼崽“一同消失在暮色里而產(chǎn)生的“苗條曲線”，就像鋒利而強勁的絲帶，潛入波紋陣陣的水流深處。”
Despite her sense of romance, Ms Darlington avoids the easy trap of anthropomorphising the otter. Instead she offers a memorable mixture of scientific study and earnest observation. She chronicles the species' dramatic decline to near extinction between the 1950s and late 1970s, thanks to hunting for sport, habitat loss and the use of certain pesticides in farming. After a ban on otter hunting and new legal protection in 1978, otters have become an important conservation success story. These creatures can now be found in the wild in every county in England.
盡管她有浪漫的想法，達林頓女士還是沒有將水獺人格化,避開了這個危險陷阱。相反她將科學研究和忠實觀察湊合到一起，結(jié)果讓人終身難忘。她全程記錄了20世紀50年代到70年代期間，由于獵殺行為、棲息地的喪失和農(nóng)耕時某些殺蟲劑的使用，導致水獺數(shù)量劇減，瀕臨滅絕的過程。1978年新的保護法律出臺并全面禁止獵殺水獺，保護水獺成為一個重要的成功故事。在英格蘭每一個郡縣,現(xiàn)在都可以看到野生水獺的蹤影。
Otters apparently enjoy a rather illustrious club of fans. Readers of Ms Darlington will be glad she is among them.
