Moonshine reflects off the newly fallen snow, illuminating the predawn hour with a supernatural brightness. The three female otters surf the snow, their forward momentum pulling them across the slick surface like kids on a Slip ’N Slide: lope-lope-slide, lope-lope-slide. They halt beside a corrugated metal culvert, side by side, until Patches lurches forward and leaps onto the bank of Admirals Lake.

Her landing fractures the frozen lakeshore, stamping an otter-sized divot. The two girls follow behind her, each landing with a loud crunch, leaving star-shaped bull’s-eyes in the ice. The otters are out early, exploiting the cold; an icy lake makes for sluggish fish.

Patches points her nose toward a stand of bare willow cane and releases a rasping hiss. Another romp of five otters cautiously bumbles out from behind a cleaver of stiffened goosegrass, each scenting the air. I don’t recognize these new otters.

Their coats are lighter in color, and the smallest has a pronounced limp favoring its right hind leg, though there’s no blood trail in the snow. From my vantage point about fifty feet away, I wait to see what the otters will do, trying not to make any noise. But these unfamiliar otters must pose a more immediate threat to each other than the human standing nearby.

They pay me little mind. In a flash, a sixth otter I have not seen leaps out from behind the newcomers. He releases a series of chirps, passing all five in a rush.

Without hesitation, he bounds at Patches and her girls. His vocalizations transition to a buzzing hum. Crest and Slash scamper forward, chuffing and purring.

This is not attack behavior. This is a solicitation to play. The three otters meet in a tackle, a jumble of tails and feet, chuckles and chirps.

Patches, unperturbed, directs a passing glance toward the newcomers and begins to groom her fur. The otter must be Swoosh, but his Nike logo muzzle mark is fading, as often happens when river otters reach maturity. I’m feeling celebratory, too, as it’s been a few months since I last saw him and I thought perhaps he’d left the cove.

His young adult coloring has darkened, filling in most of the wavelike band I used to identify him in the fall. Slash, her dark stripe still prominent on her face, tumbles into Swoosh. Swoosh snorts and nips at the air above Slash’s head just as Crest straddles Slash’s back sidesaddle.

Slash rolls over, displacing her sister, who stumbles into one of the smaller newcomers, who rolls into a sapling, causing the snow load to fall to the ground in a thud. Swoosh and the girls move their wrestling alongside Patches until Swoosh, realizing he’s beside his mother, stops his horseplay and gently headbutts her muzzle. Patches stops grooming and leans into him.

Like two cats, they nuzzle and rub cheeks. The girls let him go. They’re in their own world, wriggling on their backs and making otter-shaped snow angels.

The new otters, still observing the reunion from the sidelines, are more relaxed. One of the bigger newcomers eases over to Swoosh and throws himself on his back, landing on Swoosh’s tail. I’m not sure about the sexes of these five newcomer otters, but given their behavior, I suspect they’re all bachelors who have formed a temporary social group of young males, a phenomenon occasionally observed among marine-foraging river otters.

These social coalitions offer advantages to young male otters, especially soon after they’ve been evicted from their family groups, when their fishing skills are still in the rookie range. In a social group, male river otters may cooperatively forage, maximizing their success in capturing larger and higher-quality fish. These Lost Boys have weathered storms, surf, and now snow.

Crest and Slash clamber onto the lake, then back again, almost as if testing the structural stability of the ice. The Lost Boys join in, nipping, rolling, tackling. And then, all at once, they dance—the scat dance of marching, scratching, digging, marking, and sniffing.

This is otter play, one of the many metrics used to gauge animal health and intelligence. And if play hints at health, these otters have it in spades. A North American river otter at Seedskadee National Wildlife Refuge in Wyoming.

The first northern river otters were spotted at the refuge over two decades ago. Since then, their population has slowly expanded. They can disappear under the water quickly if they see or hear you.

Seeing otters here requires patience and luck. Image: Tom Koerner/USFWS Otters and play are closely linked in our imaginations. Whether they’re sliding in the snow, juggling rocks, grappling with and chasing each other, or pounding abalone