HBO Actress Attacked by Otters, Hospitalized

An HBO actress got a rude surprise when she was attacked by a group of otters this summer. "I felt something on my backside and on my leg," Crystal Finn told The San Francisco Chronicle. Finn appeared in the fourth season of Succession and performed alongside Will & Grace star Debra Messing in the Broadway play Birthday Candles. The incident happened in July while she was swimming in Northern California's Feather River near the Plumas National Forest. "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." As Finn was being treated for bite wounds at Tahoe Forest Hospital in Truckee, the doctors informed her that they had recently treated another person for otter bites, which they believed to be the first such incident reported in the region in recent years.  

An otter attack on a human is rare but not unprecedented. This month, otters in southern Montana injured three women on inner tubes floating on a tributary of the Missouri River, and one wounded victim had to be airlifted to a hospital after she suffered injuries, according to the Associated Press. In Finn's case, it was probably a result of the heavy rains this winter that flooded Feather River to its highest level in decades. While Finn's extended family has lived in the area for generations, they have rarely witnessed the rivers that flow through the area reaching such a high level. It was the high level of water that prompted her to take a swim upstream to a pool of water that had formed at the base of a cluster of rocks. Diving off a boulder, she felt the predator's first bite. 

Otters bit at least two people in Northern California waterways this summer, the latest in a series of rare attacks involving the mammals not known for targeting humans. https://t.co/JB3KkRjYa9

— San Francisco Chronicle (@sfchronicle) August 17, 2023

Finn explained that moments after the attack started, three otters appeared on the water's surface, about six inches away from her face. While the relationship between the otters was unclear, she suggested that one of the otters was a mother protecting her two offspring. The otters "dove back down" and began biting Finn again as she scrambled on the banks of the narrow riverway. She fought them off with her feet and managed to crawl onto a rock for safety before the otters disappeared."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 said. "The bites really hurt."

According to the actress, she was unaware of the otters before she entered the river, but even if she had seen them, she wouldn't have expected danger. "If I had seen them, I don't think it would have given me pause," she said. "I would have thought, 'Oh, those cute river otters.'" In a warning to anyone who wished to swim in Northern California waterways, Finn advised them to be aware of the aquatic mammals, as they can become aggressive and territorial when protecting their young, so they should remain alert. Despite her intention to return to the river with her daughter, she fears that the otters would have seriously injured her child. "It would have been a lot worse," she said.