‘It immediately started attacking me:’ Otter leaves Lake Tahoe swimmer bleeding – The Mercury News

Swimming trainer Lynette Bellin had been swimming for three-quarters of a mile alongside Lake Tahoe’s picturesque rocky northern shoreline this week when one thing that felt like a pair of arms grabbed her leg and yanked her underwater.

“I thought it was human,” Bellin mentioned. “It was so strong.”

But her assailant had paws, not arms.

“I turned around and that’s when I saw the otter, and it immediately started attacking me,” Bellin recalled after the river otter incident Sunday close to Incline Village.

As she tried to swim to security, the animal clawed her legs.

“When it approached my torso, I would try to push it away to deflect it, but every push seemed to make it attack more viciously,” mentioned Bellin, of Reno, who teaches swimming security to youngsters.

Scrambling to flee the “relentless” assault, Bellin tried to climb out of the water onto some rocks, however she slipped off. She swam towards one other rock, “and the otter continued to attack my legs as I tried to flee,” she mentioned.

After she managed to stand up on a rock, “the otter climbed up and started attacking me on the rock as well,” she mentioned.

The animal solely retreated when she reached about 10 ft above the lake. But it stored circling, she mentioned.

Bleeding from her legs, face and arms, Bellin contemplated her route out. “There was no way I was getting back into the water,” she mentioned.

She climbed granite boulders to achieve a motorcycle path, and walked again to the seaside the place she’d left her belongings.

“I have been swimming in Tahoe for over two decades and have never seen anything besides minnows and crawdads,” she mentioned.

At the hospital, Bellin obtained 38 stitches and a number of rabies photographs.

River otters are widespread in lots of U.S. waters, due to decades-old conservation measures together with the federal Clean Water Act, mentioned Megan Isadore, government director of the Marin-based River Otter Ecology Project.

But assaults, Isadore mentioned, are “very unusual.”

Such incidents seem to happen when river otters really feel threatened, or imagine their younger are in peril, Isadore mentioned.

“They’re very fierce in protection of their young,” Isadore mentioned. “This time of year, river otter pups are still sticking pretty close to mom.”

If the otter that attacked Bellin was a mom who believed Bellin was too near her pups, “that could’ve caused it,” Isadore mentioned.

Unlike the ocean otters in California’s coastal waters, which may weigh as much as 70 kilos, river otters tip the scales at a most of about 25 kilos, however have very sturdy jaws and claws, Isadore mentioned.

“They’re a predator — they eat all kinds of prey from fish to water-going birds to rodents, snakes, crayfish — they love crayfish,” she mentioned.

Anyone swimming in a lake or river who spots an otter within the water “should swim to shore just to be on the safe side,” Isadora mentioned. The animals are curious, however, “if something frightens them and they bite you, it’s not a good outcome,” she mentioned.

“River otters look cute and cuddly and adorable, and watching them is one of the most fun and rewarding things you can do out in the field. Swimming with them? No.”

In August 2023, within the area of three days, river otters attacked two swimmers close to Lake Tahoe in separate incidents. Broadway actress Crystal Finn of New York described what she believed was an assault by a number of river otters within the Feather River that left her with chew wounds to her decrease physique. Two days earlier, a girl swimming in Serene Lakes close to Soda Springs was handled on the identical hospital as Finn — Tahoe Forest Hospital in Truckee — for 10 to fifteen bites, some requiring stitches. Both girls obtained rabies photographs.

Bellin, proprietor of water-safety-training firm ISR Reno-Tahoe, mentioned she’ll be out of the water for 10 days after the assault whereas her wounds heal.

“But I look forward to getting back in the water with my swim students and will return to swimming in Lake Tahoe, because it truly is my favorite place in the world to swim,” she mentioned. “I will just choose a different
route.”