Olive the Otter: Facebook's Budding Star

On a hot summer day in 1995 a friend and I sat on a beach and guzzled a six-pack of pale ale in between noontime and afternoon surf sessions.

A little tipsy and full from lunch and beer (I do not recommend or condone surfing while inebriated. Look, I was in college, OK?), I grabbed my board and paddled back out anyway into the small waves and an empty lineup. The only other living things around that I could see, besides me and my friend, were two playful otters, cracking shellfish open on their bellies just a few feet away from me. They swam under my board and up the beach. I followed them. They chased me back down the beach. I don't think it was the beer -- we really were playing tag. I may have ridden a few more waves that day, but I don't remember. I do remember those otters, though.

Flash forward to 2009 and the age of social media. It's no surprise that an otter -- Olive the oiled otter -- has a popular Facebook page. Olive is being treated at the Department of Fish and Game's Marine Wildlife Veterinary Care and Research Center in Santa Cruz, Calif. She was rescued from Sunset State Beach, south of Santa Cruz, with goopy oil covering her thick coat. Her handlers say the oil probably came from natural seepage off the coast. Any California surfer knows that natural, sticky oil sometimes finds its way onto their boards, wetsuits and the bottoms of their feet. It's a pain for us to clean off, but it can kill an otter.

Olive was given an olive oil bath and thorough scrub for over two hours, and is now well on the road to recovery. Nearly 700 Facebook users are "fans" of Olive, a testament to peoples' love for nature and a genuine care for the wildlife that inhabit our coastlines.

I used to see otters all the time in the waters off the central California coast. I still do occasionally but not as often, it seems. Their numbers have been steadily declining over the past 10 years or so, and nobody really knows why, though lack of food and disease appear to be the main culprits.

Dozens of people are leaving kind comments to Olive and her handlers on her Facebook page. You can cheer her on, too, but if you're interested in directly helping Otters get healthy, make a donation to organizations like Friends of the Otter. California taxpayers can also check a box on their tax returns to contribute directly to sea otter research and recovery efforts.

And because nobody can resist an otter, here's Olive the internet star grooming herself after getting all that oil scrubbed off. Go Olive!