In otter-loving Singapore, growing calls for crackdown after animals raid spa during coronavirus circuit breaker
- Calls to cull the animals have gained momentum after seven otters ate expensive fish from a private pond owned by a former actress
- Otter watchers say the outrage was amplified by the desire to complain about anything other than the coronavirus
Life was already hard work for the seven river otters known as the Zouk family.
With the streets nearly emptied, the Zouks – named after a local nightclub – started appearing in unexpected places: splashing around in a luxury condominium pool, taking a break outside a usually teeming shopping centre in Little India and trying to cut through the lobby of a children’s hospital.
It all seemed rather harmless. But calls for a crackdown on the otter population began when the Zouks raided a private pond stocked with expensive ornamental fish on the grounds of a spa owned by a former actress.
“The otters killed all the fishes in the pond,” Jazreel Low wrote in a Facebook post punctuated by a sad face emoji and what looks like a surveillance camera image of four otters skipping through her temporarily closed business. Low later posted a picture of her 13-year-old arowana, Ah Huat – meaning “to prosper” – in better times.
“Darn otters! They gotta pay for it!” wrote one sympathetic commenter.
Within days, there were calls on social media and a radio programme to cull the slippery animals. A widely shared letter published in the Straits Times newspaper recommended deterring otters with air horns and rubber bullets.
