Otters in Northern California have just aligned themselves with “Succession” haters.
The carnivorous mammals attacked Crystal Finn, who appeared in the HBO show’s final season as ATN producer Lauren Pawson, as she was swimming in the Feather River near Plumas National Forest, and sent her to the hospital with bite wounds.
“I felt something on my backside and on my leg,” Finn told the San Francisco Chronicle Wednesday of the July encounter. “I started looking around and yelling out and [the otters] popped up right in front of me. Then they dove down and started going at me again.”
“I could see the bites on my legs and knew I had been bitten on my butt — that one was the worst, but I couldn’t see it,” she continued. “The bites really hurt.”
Finn, who won a Theatre World Award in 2022 for her Broadway debut opposite Debra Messing in “Birthday Candles,” was admitted to Tahoe Forest Hospital in nearby Truckee with bite injuries.
Otter attacks are exceedingly rare, but the actor wasn’t the only recent victim.
Martin Rosengreen, an emergency room doctor at the hospital, told the Chronicle that two people (possibly including Finn) were admitted for otter injuries within days of each other in July. That’s the first anyone at the hospital had seen an otter victim, he said.
Left: CJ Rivera/Getty Images; Right: Jean-Francois Monier/AFP/Getty Images
There have reportedly only been 59 documented otter attacks worldwide since 1875.
The Chronicle suggested the otters that attacked Finn emerged as a result of heavy winter rains that raised river water levels.
Jen Royce of Bozeman, Montana, chronicled a harrowing otter encounter of her own this week. She said she was floating down the Jefferson River with friends and “didn’t even have the chance” to warn them before otters nearly chomped off her ear.
“Otters can be protective of themselves and their young, especially at close distances,” said Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks. “They give birth to their young in April and can later be seen with their young in the water during the summer.”
Finn told the Chronicle she was glad not to have brought her own daughter along for her harrowing swim.
“It would have been a lot worse,” she said.