经济学人11:野生水獭 Otters in the wild

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　　文艺；书评；

　　Otters² in the wild

　　野生水獭

　　Beguiling³ carnivores

　　欺骗性的肉食动物

　　A muse⁴ to poets, a mystery to scientists

　　诗人的灵感，科学家的谜团

　　Poets dig my style

　　诗人尽挖我的风采

　　Otter¹ Country: In Search of the Wild Otter. By Miriam Darlington.

　　《水獭国度：搜寻野生水獭》米丽亚姆·达林顿著。

　　Written in prose as sinuous⁵ as the creatures themselves, “Otter Country” is a celebration of Britain's wild otters. These elusive⁶ animals have fascinated Miriam Darlington, a poet, since childhood, when she first read “Ring of Bright Water”, Gavin Maxwell's classic 1960 tale about living with otters. “Never mind the slippery reality it portrays,” she writes, “the spell of its otters took hold of me long ago and I still long to see one in the wild.”

　　《水獭国度》是部英国野生水獭的颂典，其散文式风格如水獭自身一般流转。诗人米丽亚姆. 达林顿从她儿时第一次读到《闪亮的水环》开始, 便对这种神秘动物非常着迷，这本书是加文·马克斯韦尔20世纪60年代创作的经典小说，讲述的是一个与水獭共处的故事。“千万不要介意其光滑的外在”她写到，“水獭的魔力早已将我牢牢吸引，我现在仍然渴望能在野外看到水獭。”

　　This mesmerising book describes her year-long quest across Britain, from Devon to Scotland, Cumbria to Wales, through seductive wild places and changing seasons, for a glimpse of otters and to meet people who dedicate their lives to them.

　　这是一本让人爱不释手的书，描述了她在英国长达一年的搜寻水獭之旅，从德文郡到苏格兰，再从坎布里亚到威尔士，穿过魅人的原野，亲历季节变迁，就为一睹水獭容颜和遇到致力于水獭研究的人们。

　　The otter was one of the earliest carnivores. Its ancestral genus Mionictis, first roamed the Earth around 30m years ago. Thirteen species now thrive around the globe, barring Australia and Antarctica, but it is Lutra lutra, the European otter and Britain's only species, that is the object of Ms Darlington's passion.

　　水獭是最早出现的肉食动物之一，它的始祖是中新鼬獭，早在3千万年以前，便开始游走于地球。现在的水獭共有13个品种，布满全球各地，除澳大利亚和南极洲。然而达林顿女士钟爱的只有欧亚水獭，它也是英国唯一的品种。

　　Otters have long fascinated man. Their nocturnal habits mean they are rarely seen—“otters give so little of themselves it's hard to know them,” Ms Darlington writes. Their “sublimely secretive” nature makes them a muse to poets and a mystery to scientists, who still have much to learn about these aquatic⁸ mammals. Their mischievous⁹ appearance belies¹⁰ their status as one of Britain's top predators¹¹.

　　人们所喜爱水獭为时已久。只是它们习惯夜间出没，很少有机会让人们看到。“水獭透露给人们的信息很少，要了解它们非常困难”达林顿这样写到。“无比神秘”的它们是诗人的灵感之源，也是科学家眼里的谜团，关于这些水族哺乳动物，还有很多东西等着他们去学习。淘气的外表下掩藏的是它们作为英国头等捕手的身份。

　　Seamus Heaney, Mary O'Malley and Ted⁷ Hughes have all devoted¹² elegant doggerel¹³ to these creatures. Hughes is taken with the otter's “Underwater eyes, an eel's. Oil of water body”, the way it “Re-enters the water by melting”. Mr Heaney declares his love for an otter's “wet head and smashing crawl/Your fine swimmer's back and shoulders/Surfacing and surfacing again.” Ms Darlington's own lyrical prose is often beautifully evocative: a male otter is “supple as rope made out of silk”; a female swimming underwater moves in a “ripple-wake”; the “thin curves” of a mother and cub¹⁴ “slip together into the twilight¹⁵, like fierce, muscled ribbons, darkening into the ribbon of the stream.”

　　谢默斯·希尼、玛丽欧玛列和泰德·休斯都曾为这些生灵写过优美的打油诗。休斯被水獭那“如鳝鱼一般的水下眼睛，油般水灵的身躯”，和它那“化身返水”的方式深深吸引。希尼宣称自己喜爱水獭“湿漉漉的脑袋和挥舞不停的爪子/你那如泳者般健美的肩背/一次一次浮出水面。”达林顿女士自己的诗词常常让人产生唯美的浮想：雄性水獭就像“丝绳般灵活”；水底潜游的雌水獭动起来就如“水波乍起”；水獭母亲的和幼崽“一同消失在暮色里而产生的“苗条曲线”，就像锋利而强劲的丝带，潜入波纹阵阵的水流深处。”

　　Despite her sense of romance, Ms Darlington avoids the easy trap of anthropomorphising the otter. Instead she offers a memorable¹⁶ mixture of scientific study and earnest observation. She chronicles the species' dramatic decline to near extinction¹⁷ between the 1950s and late 1970s, thanks to hunting for sport, habitat loss and the use of certain pesticides¹⁸ in farming. After a ban on otter hunting and new legal protection in 1978, otters have become an important conservation success story. These creatures can now be found in the wild in every county in England.

　　尽管她有浪漫的想法，达林顿女士还是没有将水獭人格化,避开了这个危险陷阱。相反她将科学研究和忠实观察凑合到一起，结果让人终身难忘。她全程记录了20世纪50年代到70年代期间，由于猎杀行为、栖息地的丧失和农耕时某些杀虫剂的使用，导致水獭数量剧减，濒临灭绝的过程。1978年新的保护法律出台并全面禁止猎杀水獭，保护水獭成为一个重要的成功故事。在英格兰每一个郡县,现在都可以看到野生水獭的踪影。

　　Otters apparently¹⁹ enjoy a rather illustrious club of fans. Readers of Ms Darlington will be glad she is among them.

　　显然水獭们拥有一个著名的粉丝俱乐部。达林顿女士的读者们很高兴看到作者也是他们中的一员。

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