otter

The otter is one of the shy, elusive wild creatures that inhabit the streams and waterways of the Yorkshire moor, a world that Dickon Sowerby knows as intimately as he knows the birds and the foxes. Dickon's knowledge of where otters make their homes is part of the vast, secret geography of the moor that he carries in his head—a geography of burrows, nests, holts, and dens that other boys would never find. He keeps these locations secret so that no one will frighten the animals away, a code of silence that mirrors the children's own vow about the hidden garden.

Dickon's Knowledge of Otter Habitats

When Mary Lennox first meets Dickon and asks him about the creatures of the moor, he tells her that he knows exactly where otters live, along with badgers and water-rats. This knowledge is not book-learned but comes from years of patient observation and silent companionship with the wild things. Dickon's understanding of the otter's ways is part of the same gift that allows him to charm foxes, crows, squirrels, and robins—a natural attunement that makes the animals trust him as one of their own. He speaks of the otter's dwelling with the same matter-of-fact certainty with which he speaks of the robin's nest or the fox's cubs, because for him the hidden lives of moorland creatures are as real and important as the human world.

The Otter in the Wider Natural World

As Colin Craven begins to recover his strength in the secret garden, Dickon expands his education beyond the garden walls, telling him about the ways of otters alongside those of foxes, ferrets, squirrels, trout, water-rats, and badgers. This revelation of the otter's habits forms part of a whole new world that opens before Colin, a world of living things that are busy building, hunting, and raising their young with the same urgency and purpose that the children themselves feel in the garden. The otter, like every creature Dickon describes, is presented not as a curiosity or a specimen but as a fellow being with its own home, its own family, and its own place in the great pattern of the moor's life. For Colin, who has spent his entire childhood shut in a room, the knowledge that otters are swimming and denning in the streams just beyond the garden walls is one more piece of evidence that the world is full of vigorous, secret, wonderful activity—and that he is now well enough to be part of it.