Mijbil the Otter

Why did Maxwell decide to keep an otter rather than another dog?

After his dog Jonnie died he was too sad to keep a dog again. He also judged his home at Camusfearna, with water encircling it only yards from the doorstep, an ideal place to try the experiment.

Why was Maxwell held up in Basra, and for how long?

He had gone to the Consulate-General for his mail, which had not arrived. He cabled England, then tried to telephone — a call had to be booked a day ahead, and the line failed, the exchange shut for a religious holiday, and the line failed again. His mail came five days later.

How did Maxwell actually come by his otter?

A friend had suggested he get one from the Tigris marshes, where they were as common as mosquitoes and often tamed by the Arabs. Maxwell carried his mail to his bedroom to find two Arabs squatting there beside a sack that squirmed, with a note reading that here was his otter.

'A thraldom to otters'

Maxwell's name for the hold the animal took over him from the moment the sack was opened — a phase of his life that had not ended when he wrote and might outlast him. He notes that almost everyone who has owned an otter shares the same fixation.

What did Mijbil look like when he first emerged from the sack?

Like a very small dragon out of a medieval imagination. He was coated head to tail in symmetrical pointed scales of dried mud, with soft velvet fur like a chocolate-brown mole showing between the tips. It took a month to get the last of the mud off.

Maxwell's otter

The common name of Mij's species. He turned out to belong to a race previously unknown to science, which zoologists eventually named Lutrogale perspicillata maxwelli after the man who brought it to their attention.

How did Mijbil's behaviour change over his first two days with Maxwell?

For the first twenty-four hours he was neither hostile nor friendly but simply aloof and indifferent, sleeping as far from the bed as he could. The second night he climbed on to the bed in the small hours and slept in the crook of Maxwell's knees.

What happened when Maxwell first took Mijbil to the bathroom?

Led there on a body-belt, Mij spent half an hour in ecstasy — diving and rolling about, racing from one end of the tub to the other below the surface, and throwing up more water than an animal his size had any business to.

What otters characteristically do with water

Every drop must be spread about the place. A bowl has to be overturned, or else sat in and splashed in until it overflows. Water must be kept moving and made to do things; standing still, Maxwell says, it is wasted and provoking.

What did Mijbil do two days after his first bath?

He escaped the bedroom, ran to the bathroom and fumbled at the chromium taps. In under a minute he had produced a trickle and then the full flow. He had been lucky in the direction; later he would sometimes screw the tap tighter and chitter with irritation when it refused to cooperate.

How did Mij play with a rubber ball?

He shuffled it round the room for hours like a four-footed footballer, dribbling with all four feet. A powerful jerk of the neck let him throw it as well, to a height and distance that surprised Maxwell.

'The real play of an otter'

Lying on his back and juggling small objects between his paws. Marbles were Mij's favourite for this: he would set two or three rolling back and forth across his broad flat stomach and keep them there, never letting one drop.

Why was getting Mij to England so awkward to arrange?

The British airline to London would not carry animals, so Maxwell had to book a flight to Paris on another airline and continue from there. That airline insisted Mij travel in a box no more than eighteen inches square, kept on the floor at his feet.

What did Mij do to the box while Maxwell was away at his meal?

He tore the lining to shreds trying to get out. Maxwell came back to silence from the box and blood dried around its airholes and the chinks in the lid, and found Mij exhausted and blood-spattered, whimpering and catching at his leg.

Why did Maxwell put the injured Mij back into the box?

He had no choice: once he had stripped out the last of the cutting edges there were ten minutes left before the flight and the airport lay five miles away. He calls Mij 'miserable' and holds the lid down by hand, which conveys how wretched he felt doing it.

Why does Maxwell call the air hostess 'the very queen of her kind'?

He confided the whole disastrous half hour to her, and instead of objecting she took charge — keeping the parcel of fish cool and suggesting he hold his pet on his knee. Later she offered to hunt the escaped otter down herself, smiling throughout.

What happened when the box was opened on the aircraft?

Mij shot out and disappeared down the cabin amid squawks and shrieks, one woman standing on her seat crying that there was a rat. Maxwell dived after his tail under a portly turbaned passenger, missed, and came up with his face covered in curry.

What game did Mij invent for himself in London?

A suitcase damaged on the journey home lay with its lid sloping. Mij found that a ping-pong ball placed at the high end would roll down, so he would dash to the far end, crouch in hiding, ambush it, grab it and carry it back up — for half an hour at a time.

Compulsive habits

Rituals a creature cannot help performing. Maxwell compares Mij's to schoolchildren's — planting the feet squarely on the centre of each paving block, touching every seventh railing upright, passing outside every second lamp post.

What did Mij insist on doing at the wall of the primary school?

On the way home, but never on the way out, he would tug Maxwell across to the low two-foot wall, jump up and gallop its full thirty yards — to the hopeless distraction of the pupils and staff inside.

Mustellines

The comparatively small group of animals to which otters belong, shared with the badger, mongoose, weasel, stoat and mink. Maxwell mentions it because Londoners guessing at Mij named almost every member of the group except the otter.

What did Londoners take Mij to be?

Almost anything but an otter — a squirrel, a baby seal, a beaver, a bear cub, a walrus, a hippo, even a brontosaur, and a leopard that had somehow changed its spots. Maxwell's favourite was the labourer who laid down his tool, spat, glared and demanded to know what it was supposed to be.

What does Mij do that shows he is intelligent, friendly and in need of affection?

He works out the bathroom tap unaided and invents a ball game from a broken suitcase. He learns to follow without a lead and come when called, sleeps in the crook of Maxwell's knees, and on the aircraft finds his way back to nuzzle Maxwell's face and neck.

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