Otter's Fun Does $800 In Damage

Lootas, a female sea otter at the Seattle Aquarium, decided to have a little fun yesterday with a loose chunk of concrete she pried out of a rock wall in her enclosure.

The wily otter was enjoying the ruckus, whacking away at the glass of her enclosure with the chunk firmly in her paws until the glass broke.

The otter, who is almost 2, was not hurt when the glass broke. It's safety glass, so it shattered into a thousand shapes safely contained by a plastic laminate.

"She broke it so spectacularly," said Galen Motin Goff, spokeswoman for the Seattle Aquarium. The second pane of the double-walled tank did not break.

Aquarium staff members were alerted to Lootas' actions by a patron, who told them "an otter is tapping on the glass." By the time staffers got to Lootas' tank, the glass was cracked. Lootas and her tank mates, Kenai and Kodiak, were moved to a tank next door.

A diver searched the tank for pieces of glass, and glass-company workers gamely boated around in the tank, surveying one of their more unusual repair jobs.

The glass will cost about $800 to replace, Goff said. The work will be done next week.

Otter antics are nothing new at the aquarium. The otters have opened doors to their exhibit and stepped out in the hall. The doors are now kept locked with latches higher than the otters can reach.

Lootas was raised from a pup by the aquarium staff after her mother was killed by a boat in Prince William Sound in Alaska. Aquarium staff members built a water bed and seal-pup pools for her, and cared for her around the clock. She weighed 5 pounds when she arrived. Today she weighs 50.

Her antics are a sign of good health and high spirit. Otters like to play and are fascinated by sound. Lootas smacked away at the glass not to escape but for the fun of it, enjoying the racket, said C.J. Casson, marine biologist at the aquarium.

Otters are the smallest of marine mammals, and one of the few adept at using tools. In the wild they break shells with rocks to eat the succulent seafood within.

Otters eat 25 percent of their body weight every day. Their hair is so thick, at about a half-million hairs per square inch, that water does not even touch their skin.

Lootas, which means Wave Eater in Haida, is a curious, rambunctious "teenager," aquarium staffers say. The tank's glass has been broken by otters three times in 10 years. Lootas was the culprit two of those three times.

"She's definitely a rebel," Casson said. "I'm sure she's smirking right now."

Lynda Mapes' phone message number is 206-464-2736. Her e-mail is lmapes@seattletimes.com.