We’re here to remind you that if you come across otters in life-threatening situations, you should definitely help.
That’s what Karen Watson of Scotland did when, as the BBC reports, she and her neighbors found two baby otters huddled for warmth in a car engine.
“I went over and there were quite a few people there at that point,” Watson says. “They were trying to coax them out the car but they had hunkered down and were trying to sleep.”
After contacting police, Watson was told she should try to intervene if the animals were in danger. Eventually, the otters were scooped up and placed into a cardboard box, which Watson put in her bathtub.
Eventually, the otters, who were named Valentine and Juliet, started to recover, and Scotland’s SPCA came to pick them up.
“It was a real group of us,” Watson says of the otter rescue efforts. “I was just lucky enough to get the nice job of babysitting!”
Dave Webb of the UK Wild Otter Trust adds that Watson and her neighbors “100% did all the right things.”
“I know there were comments online saying to leave them, but if the cubs are in a life-threatening situation – which they were – then you have to help them,” Webb says.