Porcupettes and woonty-tumps

Last night I received a text from my friend Garry who now lives in San Francisco. At first I thought it was going to be one of his usual 'I'm having a brilliant time in the sun and you're not' messages. But I'm pleased to say that, for the most part, I was wrong. It read thus:

Dude!

(Apparently you have to call people that when you're in California.)

I am sitting drinking a beer next to the sea in some harbour

(Here we go again, I thought. But no!)

and a sea otter appears! Chilling out on his back. All I need now is a heron and we are sorted!

For the very few of you who don't understand why this has any relevance or meaning, please read this now and catch up.

Then today, I caught up with Stephen Fry in America on the marvellous invention that is the iPlayer and in that were sea otters! As these things apparently always come in threes, I'm eagerly awaiting my next sea otter instalment.

Animals are brilliant, of course. I particularly like facts about animals. I've recently found out, for example, that a baby porcupine is called a porcupette. And that the Old English name for a mole was a 'woont'. Consequently, molehills were known as 'woonty-tumps', probably the best word ever.

Join me again tomorrow for another edition of Wildtrack.