A passel of angry otters attacked a teenage girl last week in Lake Shasta, Calif. I'm not making this up. A group of girls swimming in the lake saw a number of the supposedly cuddly creatures coming their way. The girls skedaddled. Unfortunately, one didn't make it to shore fast enough and sustained a number of nasty bites and scratches, inflicted by some seriously perturbed river otters.

I'm not trying to make light of this girl's injuries. In fact, by all accounts she and her friends did the right thing when they saw the otters. They swam away. So there's no need for any castigation.

This story received national attention, however, because of the novelty factor. Otters are always among the most popular critters at any zoo or aquarium. I'm one of the dizzy fools who just loves the things. I could watch them run, slide and swim all day. Otters seem to live the good life. And they've got that perpetual smile.

My wife Barbara framed a picture of a young river otter (taken by a photographer at the newspaper where she worked at the time) and gave it to me for my birthday a few years back. The little guy is being held on the lap of a zookeeper, and he's holding one paw (already full of sharp claws) down in front of him, as if to say, "Another Guinness, please."

See, that's the thing. We anthropomorphize the animals we like. Ask any cat or dog (or hamster or guinea pig or snake) owner that you know, and she or he'll have stories about how the critter "acts just like a person sometimes." A whole lot of us really dig otters. And we do the same stupid thing. We think that if an otter is smiling at us, he or she must like us. We think that the animal in question sees us, finds us just as attractive as we find it and is returning the affection offered. We tend to forget that in the animal kingdom, smiling is generally considered a threatening gesture.

I'd like to emphasize, once again, that the girls at Lake Shasta saw those smiles, recognized them for the malevolent sneers that they were and tried to boogie out of the water as fast as possible. They're the smart ones.

But folks like me, well, we're dumb. I'll watch otters scampering all over their "river" habitat at the zoo and instantly melt. They are cute. They're almost incurably adorable. I just want to jump in the water and frolic with them, hugging their lush fur and tweaking those big, expressive cheeks.

Problem is, otters are closely related to weasels and wolverines and badgers and other decidedly mean critters. They're not creatures to trifle with.

Last week in the lake, the weasel side won out. For one reason or another (at first, some speculated that the girls had inadvertently come across a den full of young otters, but no such nest was found), these animals--and let's not forget, they are animals--decided that the day's list of fun activities included attacking as many young female humans as possible.

And so one girl is now undergoing a series of rabies shots (that disease being as good an explanation for the strangely aggressive--toward humans, anyway--activity of the critters. And anyway, you don't want to take a chance on a girl foaming at the mouth. Tends to reduce the chance of a prom date) and her friends are now probably scared out of their minds when they even think about otters.

Like I said, they're the smart ones.

I've got my own little pet theory about why the otters attacked. I think the den theory is good as far as it goes, but I'd like to take it all the way. Those critters have had about enough encroachment on their land (and water) by these humans as they can take. A line in the water had to be drawn, and once those girls--innocent or not--crossed it, well, war was waged.

In other words, the otters are mad as hell and they're not gonna take it anymore.

I think it's a great theory. Almost flawless. Except for that anthropomorphizing thing.

Damn.

Jon Worley's office is littered with otter paraphernalia, including the aforementioned photo, a ceramic sea otter and a rocks glass with an etching depicting a sea otter ripping open an urchin.