A Year In The Life - Day 275, February 20, 2015

"What the heck is this!?" you ask?...well...it's kind of what it looks like... it's a 'toilet'.  An otter toilet, to be exact.   That means, in otter terms, a place where they come out of the ice and well, you know.  Generally there will be things like bones and fish skin, etc. there too...as you can make out here, if you're interested enough to look closely at this sort of thing... S O P in this scenario is to place a 280 or 330 conibear, laid upon sticks, right over the hole.   This (the sticks) is to keep it from freezing down into the snow - the sun warms up the dark trap during the days and it then melts down into the snow and will freeze during the overnight drop in temps.  But the next time they pop their head up out of the hole....Whack!   Otterly simple.