Around the area in which I grew up things got inexplicably more intense only shortly after my deep collectors desire for otters, became a fact.
It was such a nice area, square houses, flat lawns, green hedges and kind, uncreative people dressed in pastel colours.
This sunny and child-friendly area became less crowded already the very day I got my first fish-tank.
It was obvious that my grandmother (dark as chocolate and sweet as sugar canes, always dressed in large, baroquely - flowered dresses) supported me greatly for my hobby. Every year, on my birthday, she would give me a book or a leaflet, and it would be about otters, purely otters.
The otter-tank was a 6 times 7 sq. metres, a Fit-4-Otter 3000X Tank with X-PRESS Clean-as-baby cheeks Water Filter System Appex.
I was in heaven.
And why would parents allow their only son to import such a bastardly large and expensive thing into the house?
Well, because they denied it all. Whenever I said the word "otter" my mother immediately said the word "no", my dad - which was less bright - always said "yes". If there was anything I would fancy within the fabulous world of otters; I would immediately ask my dad the moment he was outside my mothers' hearing range (which meant we had to go far, days I spent hiking with him in the mountains, always suffering hard to get hold of the newest "Otter Passion Magazine").
The tank was huge, six men from AquaSquawn(tm) had to help me get the thing into the livingroom and set it up.
It was such a wonder, in the golden sunlight reflecting from the neighbours porsche the tank sparkled. The sofa, the bulky television set and the oak coffee table was degraded to the basement. That was in all, not a bad idea, because my dad would always be easily accessible in the basement from then on - to watch his baseball matches in peace. Now getting hold of an otter would be like stealing sweets from a baby.
I named her Charlotte.
She was the most adorable and wonderful otter I have ever lived to meet, and yet I still collect otters - there is no otter that is like Charlotte was. Charlotte was an American Sea Otter, and such a fine specimen too. I bought her off illegal immigrants in trade for a giant bag of very pretty marbles.
A boy named Henry G. H. Wink was as passionate about otters as I was, we were the bestest of friends back then. This Henry G. H. Wink would come to my house every day after school, and he'd dip his little hand in the tank and call out for Charlotte.
Henry G. H. Wink was an exceptionally skinny boy, every time I looked at him I feared my eyes might break him in two if I looked too hard, and touching him could be dangerous if you didn't watch your step - his ribcase was extraordinarily sharp.
It did not take long until the splashing of three gorgeous otters had (supposedly) destroyed the foundations of our house so much that we had to move out. It happened recently after the fattest Otter (Otto) got a thing for the song "Coffee in the Pot" by Supergrass.
I did not want to move together with my obsessive-compulsive parents. Instead I bought a truck to temporarily store my otters in. For Christmas my belowed, black and fat grandmother took me to Vegas gambling, and we shared hotel-rooms with two foreigners named Siegfried and Roy. They had two giant tigers in a cage and outfits so tight it looked as if they could hardly breathe in them. A few years after they had their breakthrough, and I had not realized that I stood and slept in the same room as geniuses for an entire Christmas. Since then they have been my idols, and one day I hope I will come to be as brave and dumb as they were.
Since that special Christmas in Las Vegas I have grown a very spiky mustache, and I have a productive and happy otter farm about the size of Denmark, yes,
life is good on us believers.
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