Why are otters so Cool?

So here I was sitting in my kayak on Juniper Creek . . . early of a summer morn.  
I had aready cooked cups of coffee and warmed a bagel with my trusty jetboil camping stove. 
I had sat  . . . in stillness, . .  for a time watching the fish and taking pictures. 
That's a big gar in the center with bass in the foreground.

When suddenly. . .  I hear something in the brush . . .  and  . .

  its getting closer!

 

and out of the reeds pops a big otter.  He is the Mac Daddy otter, his head held high

with rippled muscles on his flanks and shoulders,

he surveys his kingdom and warily eyes me, the unforeseen intruder.

Cautious but unafraid he checks me out for a few.

(Actually, in the pic he is scratching his belly with his right foot and

 if you zoom in you can see a profile hint of male genitalia -  hence the Mac Daddy)

Satisfied I am not an immediate threat he decides to go about his business.

right at this point, he gives me a look . .

Now I don't understand otter-speak,  though I'm trying.

this guy is cool, and deliberate.  He doesn't like me.

But once he gets in the water he feels more at home.

He lightens up.  He's cool.

The expression from the safety of the water is more the curious otter look 

I see from most otters (which I translate as, "Are you a potential source of food?") 

He turns and he is gone.

I think otters are so amazingly cool because they are truly masters of their element. 

Their  movements grace effortless, as if needing only to will themselves to shape-shift through the water. Yet still, the curious otter belies a skillful, deadly hunter and pure carnivore.   

Maybe the fact that otters can hunt so well and move so adeptly,

allows them the opportunity to lighten up and raise thier level of awareness higher

than the simple mindset of subsistence and reproduction. 

Clearly they know they are cool and can back it up.