Otters attack swimmers in California including actor who appeared on ‘Succession’
River otters attacked two swimmers in northern California — and one of them is an actor who appeared in an episode of “Succession,” news outlets reported.
“I felt something on my back side and on my leg,” Crystal Finn told the San Francisco Chronicle. “I started looking around and yelling out and (the otters) popped up right in front of me. Then they dove down and started going at me again.”
She told the outlet she was attacked while she was swimming in the Feather River near Plumas National Forest in July. Her family has lived in the area for decades and she wouldn’t have expected danger, even if she’d seen the otters, she told the outlet.
“If I had seen them, I don’t think it would have given me pause,” she told the outlet. “I would have thought, ‘Oh those cute river otters.’”
Despite their innocent appearance, the attack seemed orchestrated, she told SFGATE.
“They looked exactly as you would expect: very cute,” she told the outlet. “They weren’t baring their teeth or anything. But they seemed organized, like they were working together.”
Finn’s 9-year-old daughter had been “swimming in another part of the river with her cousins,” the outlet reported.
“I was just in total shock,” she told the outlet. “And I was definitely a little shaken thinking about what would have happened if my daughter and her cousins were with me. I was just about to bring them down to the area — it would have been a much different scenario.”
Finn booked it to the river’s shore, making sure to keep her face above water to protect it from the otters, The Mercury News reported. She told the outlet the otters swam off once she was out of the water.
“As soon as I was out of there, they seemed happy to bob along, go on their way,” she told the outlet.
Another swimmer was bitten 10 to 15 times two days prior at Serene Lakes near Soda Springs, the outlet reported.
Dr. Martin Rosengreen, who treated Finn, said prior to these two attacks, he had “never seen another otter attack” in his practice, SFGATE reported. He expects Finn and the patient attacked at Serene Lakes to fully recover.
Megan Isadore, executive director of the River Otter Ecology Project, told The Mercury News that otter attacks are “very seldom, especially considering how many people are in the water, all over the country.”
Otters don’t usually attack people, but it can happen when they’re protecting their young, McClatchy News previously reported.
On Aug. 2, an otter attack on three women tubing on a river in Montana left one of them hospitalized, McClatchy News reported.
Earlier in the summer, a sea otter — much bigger and more volatile than river otters — gained internet fame after she developed a dangerous habit of bullying surfers off their surfboards at a popular surfing spot in Santa Cruz, McClatchy News reported.
“It’s hard because people think the behavior is cute, but it can escalate into a dangerous situation for both the animal and the humans pretty quickly,” California Department of Fish and Wildlife environmental scientist Colleen Young told McClatchy News in June.
Finn played Lauren Pawson in an episode in season four of the HBO drama, “Succession,” according to Entertainment Tonight. She also performed in the Broadway play “Birthday Candles,” the San Francisco Chronicle reported.
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