Natural World (1983) s30e03 Episode Script

The coast of California is a wild and unpredictable place.
It is the home of the Californian sea otter - a small animal in a huge ocean.
The shoreline divides us, marking the edge of our world and the beginning of theirs.
It can be difficult for us to understand an animal that lives its life just out of reach.
But sometimes an animal crosses that divide and gives us a chance to get to know them.
This is the story of a sea otter that has chosen to leave the open ocean for life in a millionaires' playground.
Welcome to the Hotel California Such a lovely place Such a lovely place Such a lovely place Welcome to the Hotel California Such a lovely place Such a lovely place Such a lovely place Monterey harbour is a luxurious place for people, but it is an extraordinary choice of home for a wild otter.
Her decision to live here is not just unusual, she's taken a huge risk, both for herself and for her newborn baby daughter.
Raising her pup in this marina could be the most expensive decision this mum will ever make.
The mum gave birth right here on the dock.
Her pup is just a few days old.
Ever since the pup was born the mum has been lying here, holding her close.
Her pup will be completely dependent on her for six months.
So anything that scares the mother, or undermines the bond growing between them, could threaten the pup's chance of survival.
But in such a busy marina, quiet times are very hard to come by.
MUSIC PLAYS ENGINE STARTS ENGINE REVS It's summer, and wealthy Californians are at play.
Living among these yachts seems a crazy choice when beyond the harbour wall lies a beautiful stretch of wild coastline.
A perfect sea otter habitat.
Just beyond the rocky shore lie vast beds of seaweed.
This is the canopy of an underwater kelp forest.
A place where the water is calm.
Here, in sheltered coves, sea otters relax.
And sea otter mothers give birth.
This pup is also a few days old, but unlike the harbour pup he was born into the water and will never leave it.
Along this quiet stretch of coast there is little to disturb the bond growing between them.
But this female has different problems to the mum in the harbour.
She has balanced the newborn pup on her belly, not because he will drown but because he could freeze.
Beyond the kelp, cold water seeps up from a deep underwater canyon.
Sea otters spend as much time as they can basking in the sun and drying and fluffing up their thick fur.
They keep as much of their body out of the cold water as possible, particularly their hands and feet.
While they rest they wrap themselves in kelp so they don't get washed out to sea.
But they haven't always been this tied to the ocean.
In the past, otters came onto land.
They have been forced to live in the kelp by their fear of people.
200 years ago they were hunted for their soft fur.
Otter pelts were so valuable that people called them "soft gold".
Back then there were 20,000 otters on this coast, but by 1911 there were just 50 left.
Since then they've been protected.
Today there are 2,500 sea otters here.
Some have colourful tags, so scientists can track their recovery.
The Monterey Bay Aquarium even takes in injured otters and tries to save them.
But most sea otters remain very frightened of people.
That is why it is so remarkable that the harbour mum has reverted to resting on dry land, although she remembers the security of the kelp and can't resist wrapping herself up.
On the dock her pup stays warm and dry, but the decision to raise her pup so close to people is risky.
The marina isn't just a parking lot for expensive boats, it's part of a working harbour.
All aboard that funk boat that I'm about to start sailing on Generations of fishermen have brought their catch back here and the gulls and the sea lions have followed them.
Unlike the other animals here sea otters don't eat fish.
But otters do sometimes visit the harbour on their way along the coast.
To the tourists the otters are an attraction, but to most who live and work here the animals can be in the way.
But the harbour mum is different.
She is not just a visitor.
She has set up home here - and in the most exclusive corner of the harbour.
People who have spent a fortune on their boats might not welcome a wild animal on their tidy dock.
But the mother otter has chosen her spot very carefully.
Jim is a businessman and entrepreneur who owns a dive boat in the marina.
The mum is on his slip.
This is extraordinary.
Lo and behold right in front of you - ten feet away - there is an otter that before you'd only hope to catch a glimpse of out in the kelp and here's one right in front of you.
It was a special moment for me because I didn't know if it was ever going to happen again.
But the mum has deliberately had her pup near Jim's boat.
She checked this place out before she gave birth and she knows that Jim is a quiet guy who will tolerate her and give her space.
This has given her the time she needed to bond with her pup.
But she hasn't eaten since the birth and is getting hungry.
Nervously she leaves the pup to search for food.
She stays close by and grabs a tiny crab to eat, but she can't ignore the pup's frightened calls.
PUP SQUEALS This is the first time the pup has been in the water.
The pup is too weak to swim so the mum holds her tight.
MOTHER OTTER COOS Soothed by the movement of the water and her mum's soft calls, the pup is soon fast asleep.
She couldn't do this if she didn't feel safe.
But she can't eat and hold the baby, so very gently she returns her to the dock.
She quickly runs out of food under Jim's dock.
As the days go on she tries different slips close by, parking the pup each time she dives.
She is torn between comforting the pup and feeding herself.
It is vital that she gets the balance right, for both their sakes.
At the end of the day they come back to Jim's dock to rest.
Without realising it they are becoming part of Jim's life too.
It went from being, "I'm going to relish this because it's never going to happen again", to, "Now I have something to look forward to when I go down to the marina".
Jim is quiet, still and respectful, and the mum seems content for him to share these intimate moments with them.
I think she trusts you until you do something differently, so if you were to betray her by reaching for the pup or doing something that would frighten her I don't think she would forgive you.
But even though she trusts Jim, the security of the dock is not enough.
The pup is getting bigger and it is difficult to find food around these expensive boats.
She has made her job much harder than a mother on the coast because she is cut off from the natural wealth of the sea.
The seas off California are so rich that they attract an abundance of animal life.
And for generations fishermen have also been drawn to this coast.
For 60 years this old Monterey boat has been fishing here.
The crew are pulling up pots of prawns from Monterey's underwater canyon, a rich deep abyss that lies just beyond the kelp.
Monterey grew wealthy on the back of the fishing industry, but today it's dive boats like Jim's that are more common in these waters.
Jim comes here to enjoy the magic and beauty of the place.
The kelp forest is full of life.
A place where every dive brings new surprises.
But even for experienced divers glimpsing an otter underwater is a rare treat.
Beyond the kelp, the ocean floor drops into the canyon, this is the edge of the otter's world.
But it's the up-welling of nutrients from this abyss that feeds their rich, kelp forest home.
Otters are powerful swimmers, but they are not built to catch fish, so otters have to be canny and persistent to find enough to eat.
Searching for crabs and octopus hiding in the rocks takes a long time.
Even in the kelp forests otters spend most of their day trying to get enough to eat.
Around the rocks the sea is rough, perfect conditions for carpets of shellfish.
The otters need a lot of strength to rip mussels and barnacles off the rocks, but they're not strong enough to break them open.
To do that they need a tool.
Resting a stone on their bellies and holding a clam in their hands the otters smash open the shells.
It can take a pup six months to learn how to do this.
It's a skill handed down the generations.
The harbour pup is now three weeks old, but the mum can't show her how to find and open shells like the otters along the coast because in the marina there is no kelp forest and few stones.
Jim has discovered that the mum has found her own way of getting by.
You'd be sitting on the boat and you hear somebody's hammering or doing some maintenance on their boat until the first time that you see the otter coming up with a shell and they use the bow of the boat to crack open the shell.
All I thought was, "That's the darn cutest thing I've ever seen".
But the mum isn't just cute, she is very clever.
She has taken skills from the wild and reinvented them for her new surroundings.
And there's a subtlety in what she does.
She's worked out which parts of the boats are hardest.
The pup watches closely.
As she chips paint off the boat she causes thousands of dollars worth of damage.
No wonder she checks whether boat owners are watching her! The owner of this boat isn't as forgiving as Jim, he hangs tequila bottles off the side to scare her off.
Although some boat owners find them a nuisance, Jim is enjoying the otters around his slip and is spending more and more time here.
Sometimes I'll get distracted by the pup and what it's doing, then I lose track of time.
Every day they're a little different, every play period is a little bit different, so I think that's really the attraction.
It gives me an excuse to stop and it seems to be an experience that I need at this time in my life maybe.
Up until now the slips around Jim's boat have been the limit of the pup's world.
But to find enough food they will have to go further and that means that the pup must learn to swim.
The mum is taking her just past the slips to a bit of quiet water, away from the moving boats.
A fish was made to swim in the ocean A boat was made to sail on the sea As sure as there are stars above I know, I know you were made for me You were made for me At first the mum holds her, then she lets her go, just for a minute.
A fish was made to swim in the ocean A fish was made to swim in the ocean A boat was made to sail on the sea A boat was made to sail on the sea As sure as there are stars above I know, I know you were made for me You were made for me You were made for me This is her first swim.
The pup's fur is fluffier than her mother's, which helps her to float, but makes her awkward in the water.
Soon she is tired.
The pup will become stronger and swim a little further with the passing of each summer day.
By the beginning of autumn, the change in the pup is incredible.
Now she's the one trying to drag her mum into the water! The pup has an adventurous spirit, but the exhaust pipes of a boat are not a safe place to play.
The mum is quick to come to her rescue.
It's not safe for a naive little pup to explore the marina alone.
The slips are full of moving objects and sharp blades.
Even so, it is time to show the pup the underside of this world.
She's losing her fluffy baby coat and can dive with her mum to find food.
Beneath the docks and tethered yachts, the marina is a maze of shadows and strange creatures.
The water here is clean but as calm as a pool.
A refuge for miniature shrimp and shoals of young fish.
A jellyfish swarm has been blown in from the sea.
The water is so still that they have become trapped beneath the yachts.
But none of this is food for otters, they rely on shellfish that need rich, flowing water to grow.
The pup is cut off from the vitality of the ocean beyond the harbour wall.
The rocks here are covered with mussels but they are in the roughest patches of water.
This female knows she can always find food on the rocks, but reaching it is dangerous.
So she leaves her pup in the swell and heads for the rocks alone.
She has learnt how to surf up onto the mussel beds.
She has to work fast to prise off mussels before the next big wave comes.
As the waves drag her back, she uses their power to wrench off a handful of mussels, which she can take back to her pup.
The pup is watching his mum and learning the techniques that will help him reach food.
A trick that the harbour pup is missing out on.
But there is one huge advantage to growing up in the harbour.
Because the pup hasn't had to fight the ocean swell, she's grown big.
She's now strong enough to keep up with her mum.
The mum has chosen this quiet morning to show the pup her own way of finding food.
But it means leaving the marina and heading to the outer edge of the harbour, to the industrial fishing wharf.
Here the currents are strong and there is nowhere to rest, but it's a trip worth making.
Just like the coast otter, the mum leaves the pup in a safe place and heads under the wharf, alone.
This is not a place for an inexperienced otter.
It is dark and noisy, and full of unexpected dangers.
This is a shellfish farm.
The cages are full of giant underwater snails, called abalone.
In the past, abalone thrived in the kelp forests all along the coast and were a favourite delicacy of both people and otters.
But now there are so few that it is illegal for people to collect them.
So they are carefully tended for the six years they take to grow.
Each day kelp is brought in from the ocean and stuffed into the cages for the abalone to eat.
As the cages are lowered, water runs through them washing fresh nutrients out onto the pilings below the farm.
Although the mum cannot reach the abalone she knows the rich water under the farm means that pilings here are covered in life.
These barnacles and mussels are bigger than anywhere else in the harbour.
She needs to be strong to rip barnacles off the pilings, but unlike the coast mothers she does not have to fight the waves and has time to feed.
As she heads for the surface, fish dart in to grab any scraps.
The mum returns to the pup after each dive and hands over her share of the food.
Discipline is strict.
The pup must stay in the same place every time her mum dives to avoid being separated from her, or hurt.
As well as barnacles, crabs are abundant here, attracted to the offcuts dropped from the fishing boats as they pass by.
The mum is proving she can give the pup a good start in life.
Now that they can travel together across the harbour, there will be enough food for them both.
The pup's world is suddenly much bigger, but this also exposes her to other threats.
The harbour lies within the territory of a large male.
He visits the harbour regularly as part of his patrol.
It's he who decides which otters are welcome here.
He's known as Pink Blue, after the colour of his flipper tags.
He is also known to be very aggressive.
Last year, he took over this part of the territory from the resident male.
He killed his rival in the process.
This gives him the right to mate with any females who turn up in the harbour.
It is normal for male sea otters to hold onto the slippery female by her nose while they mate.
But Pink Blue's unbridled strength has left females with serious cuts.
Pink Blue is not a danger to the mum at the moment, but as the pup gets closer to weaning, that may change.
Through the late autumn, Jim continues to watch the otters.
He's become so involved watching the mum, she's become known locally as Jim's Otter.
But his anxiety for them is growing too.
I would be there before sunrise and it felt like sometimes my heart wouldn't really start beating until I saw them and that they were OK.
He is right to be concerned.
The pup is almost four month old, she needs to play, but perhaps has more energy than sense.
Every day the mum takes the pup across the harbour.
She is working hard to teach her pup the skills she will need.
In two months time, she will need to be fully independent, but she still has a lot to learn.
She has watched her mum cracking open shells but she'll only learn which surfaces are best for opening food by trying it herself.
The mum shows her that metal ladders work well, but the wood nearby isn't a great place to crack shells.
Rubber is even less effective! This will take a bit of trial and error.
Had a little girl She was little and low She used to love me But she don't no more Got to step it up and go Yeah, go Can't stand pat Swear you gotta step it up and go Yeah.
She is supposed to be staying close to her mum, but she's got distracted and has wandered away.
Unable to find the pup, the mum calls for her.
The pup hears the call PUP SQUEAKS .
.
but so does Pink Blue.
PUP SQUEAKS He grabs the pup and frightens her, knowing that her calls will bring the mum in.
This is a trap.
MOTHER CALLS When she arrives, she will quickly give up her food in exchange for the pup.
Pink Blue has got what he wanted, a free meal.
But he has another reason to take interest in them.
He wants to see if the mum is ready to mate.
She won't come into season until the pup is weaned.
But that won't stop Pink Blue harassing her.
To protect her daughter she drags her away.
Winter's coming.
The people have gone, the boats are quiet, the animals can relax.
SEA LION CRIES The mum has adapted incredibly well to a life among the polished chrome and neatly coiled ropes.
Tucked away in the marina, the mum and pup have found some peace.
The pup gets a reassuring suckle.
She is still a baby after all.
But the encounter with Pink Blue turns out to be just a hint of things to come.
Unfortunately, this was the last time anyone saw the mum and pup together.
ELECTRONIC BEEPING Two days later, Jim gets a call from the otter scientists at the aquarium.
A badly injured female has been rescued and they think it's Jim's Otter.
I didn't really know what to expect and I was very anxious.
All I knew was that they'd picked her up, she was on the edge of death.
There was no real assurance that she was going to make it.
It seems Pink Blue did try to mate with her and she was trying to protect the pup.
The demands of motherhood have weakened her.
It wasn't a fair fight.
She will be kept in this tank in the aquarium while they try to help her.
To be injured by an aggressive male at a time when she was just completing her job seemed very unfair.
She doesn't deserve this.
Worse still, no-one has any information about her pup.
The pup is all of a sudden without its parent, completely at the mercy of whatever is going to be dealt it now.
Jim spends the rest of the daylight looking for the pup among the slips, even though he knows there would be very little he could do to help were he to find her.
It's a tough decision, whether to get involved in an animal's life, or to let nature take its course.
The following day at first light, the pup is seen in the harbour.
She has survived the fight between her mum and Pink Blue.
But on her own, only four months old, her chances are dwindling.
She has found a little bit of food, but Pink Blue has spotted her.
She gives up her food to him straightaway, to avoid him injuring or even killing her.
The pup faces a difficult choice.
If she stays in the harbour she risks losing any food she finds to Pink Blue.
If she leaves, she faces the wild winter ocean, a world for which she is unprepared.
Nevertheless, she has gone.
For the otters on the coast, the winter months are as tough as it gets.
The storms this year are violent.
They rip out the kelp, leaving the otters with no place of rest.
Even pups that have been raised here can become separated from their mothers and overwhelmed by the ocean.
Out here, lone pups rarely survive.
The aquarium picks up injured or dead otters along the coast.
The harbour pup is still missing, but until a body is found in the harbour there is still hope.
After six weeks of nursing her back to health, the aquarium staff feel the mum is ready to be released.
There is still no sign of the pup around the yachts.
It was an unknown, what she was going to do when we released her.
Is she going to go looking for the pup? Or is there going to be aggression between her and the male? My greatest fear was that the male would attack her when it came back.
It was a happy day, and a lot of anticipation to see what she was going to do.
Back in the harbour, and alone, the mum has no energy to search for her pup.
But the truth is that her chance to finish raising her daughter has gone.
Now she needs time and a safe place to recover from her ordeal.
She did actually hang out by my slip.
I would come down to do boat maintenance and she would be sitting at the end of the slip-off from my boat.
And I wanted to think that that was more than coincidence.
The aquarium staff have put tags on her flippers so that they can check on her progress.
The human world has given her respite, but she's still a wild animal.
Now that she has no pup to suckle, she's come into season again.
A male has picked up her scent, but this is not Pink Blue.
A new male has sneaked into the harbour without Pink Blue seeing him.
He approaches her on the dock to persuade her to come with him.
OTTER COOS Whether she needs to mate, or is just too weak to fight, the mum accepts him.
This male is gentler than Pink Blue.
She has been lucky.
Hold me close and hold me fast The magic spell you cast This is la vie en rose If she falls pregnant now then Pink Blue will have no reason to pursue her.
But this is not the end to her change in fortune.
Jim had never lost faith in her mothering skills, never given up hope for the pup.
And finally, one evening, he hears a familiar sound.
It was the pup.
It could only be her because she was feeding at the places her mum had taught her.
Even in the short time she had with her mum, she had learnt just enough to survive.
She followed her mother's decision to stay in the harbour.
This saved her from the winter storms.
And by keeping to the darkest corners and feeding at night, she has stayed hidden from Pink Blue.
But more than this, she has found her own way of getting by.
To her, this antique bottle discarded decades ago on the harbour floor, has become a tool.
Like her mum, she is full of creativity! Through the nurture of her mother and own strength she has made it through to independence.
The chances of her following the same path as her mother and coming back to give birth on the dock is very likely.
To carry on that relationship, with her now as a mother, would be fantastic.
Not just the curiosity of seeing whether she has the same dedication and love and nurturing that her mum did, but just to see how she handles the raising of a family.
She and her mum are wild otters living among million dollar yachts in one of the most beautiful marinas in the world.
They have shown how intelligent and adaptable sea otters are, no matter where they choose to live.
But by living in the harbour this particular mum and pup have done something more.
For me personally, I am happy that there are the harbour otters because it's helped me to slow down.
Watching them helps me live my life more the way that I would like to.
The mum and her pup prove that the chance to stop and become entranced by the life of a wild animal can be priceless.
The harbour mum and the other otters of Monterey live surrounded by people.
But relationships between people and otters haven't always been easy.
How do the people who live here today feel about having otters on their doorstep? I wake up every morning to an otter on my dock.
I am connected with otters on a level most people aren't.
They just want to pet them like a, like, like a pet.
But I'd never recommend to do that.
They're delicious, especially with curry.
I love 'em, I just think they're beautiful and they're sweet and they're cute.
It's funny, I put Frank Sinatra on and next thing you know I've got a couple of otters on each side of my dock.
The mother just had a baby, had a little baby, and it's teaching her how to swim.
I watch it every day out here, it makes my day.
Though the otters are cute they can also be a bit of a nuisance.
They use the boats as part of their tool to break their shells open, all the food that they're eating, it's quite noisy.
Especially when you've got an aluminium boat, it really echoes.
I go ahead and just let 'em do it, but I want 'em to stop.
They're not going to tear up aluminium, but it's awful loud! I don't mind him much, but I don't like what he's done to my boat, the damage he's done.
Probably cost me 1,000 at least, per side, to fix when I decide to fix it.
I have been caught trying to shoo the otters away from damaging the hull of our boat.
From a dead sleep, you arise in the middle of the night dressed as you would be when you're dead asleep.
And wouldn't you know, at 2am, 3am you would expect nobody to be on the docks and bother you, but I've been caught on a couple of different occasions.
I think the word "wrap's" come up several times.
Stop.
It's like, it's just like having a baby around that wakes you up at that time to It wants to eat or something.
That's how it feels.
Sometimes I spend time watching 'em, but I'm so used to 'em now that to everybody else it's like a fantastic thing to see 'em.
So it's just like, like seeing a dog.
It's not a big deal.
When fur hunting was banned in 1911, the otter started to make a comeback.
But not everyone here welcomed their return.
Back then, Monterey was a different place.
It was a busy fishing port.
The people here grew rich catching fish and processing them in the canneries.
And then in the '30s and '40s, it was the fishing capital of the world.
For me, when we lived here, the very first time Cannery Row still smelled like fish.
And now it smells like chocolate, and T-shirts.
Then the fishing industry collapsed, the government placed a ban on the fishermen taking shellfish.
At the same time, the otters were starting to increase in number.
The fishermen who were left thought it unfair that the otters were eating food that they were no longer allowed to catch.
Some people harbour resentment because they compete with us for food.
And they're the keystone animal, they like abalone and urchins, for example, and so do people.
So not everybody likes them.
I got nothing against them except they eat all the abalone and sea urchins that we used to otherwise eat ourselves.
The fisherman is close to the ocean.
They know that the ocean is a living form and they respect it and they have no ill feelings about anything like that.
It just broke our heart.
Our soul-food was taken away from us They're little creatures, they're cute but they definitely are devastating.
I mean, they eat 24-hours-a-day, good thing there's not that many.
There aren't that many.
With a population of 2,500, the Californian sea otter is considered endangered.
Some people here think it's our responsibility to protect them.
There are so many people who don't care that the mighty few who do, must protect them.
There's a lot of conservation groups that do a lot of research with the sea otters.
The California sea otter was almost annihilated.
There were only 50 of them left.
They are considered a threatened species, they're protected under the Endangered Species Act, and the Marine Mammal Protection Act.
But in spite of this protection, the otter numbers are no longer increasing.
Michelle Staedler, at the Monterey Bay Aquarium, is trying to find out why.
We know that the survive or the birth rate in California of sea otters is pretty high, and we have over 90% birth rate.
But the weaning rate is low, it's only 50%, so we're trying to find out what are the reasons for that.
What's behind that? Michelle thinks the pups are dying because there isn't enough food for them.
Even though the fishermen aren't allowed to take shellfish, the eco system has yet to recover.
No matter how hard some mothers work, they can't feed themselves AND their pups.
It's a lot of work to be a sea otter mum, it's not an easy life.
It's very sad when you see the mums that have put so much energy and so much work into raising this pup, and then the pup just turns around and doesn't survive as soon as she weans it.
So it makes you think a lot about the population and what a struggle it is and how much they live on the edge.
Every otter is important to the scientists.
They even ask local people to help protect them.
Some of them get sick we have a phone number for, for help.
If they see an injured otter, they call the Otter Rescue Hotline.
The people from Rescue, they taking them to wherever they taking them and then they clean them up, they heal them.
And then when they putting them back so they number them.
That's how I know they keeping track of, of most of them.
The scientists also collect dead otters.
By analysing them, they've found out that many have died of disease and pollution.
If the sea otters are dying, this may signal a more serious problem.
A reason for all the local people to be worried.
Today, there are a lot of problems that sea otters are facing, such as disease, parasites, there's a lot of things in the water run off that's hurting them.
The sea otter cannot be protected singularly.
You have to protect its constant environment and that includes pollution in the rivers that spew into the oceans.
The chemicals are the real culprits of the sea.
I mean, it's big and you would think that it's endless.
Well, it's not endless cos if you start mixing enough in it then pretty soon you've got a soup.
It's about clean water, it's about a clean environment.
The health of the ocean and the animals in it is very important in Monterey.
Most of the people here rely on tourists for their income.
Even the old seafood canneries have been reopened as tourist attractions.
And the tourists come for the wildlife.
In fact, each otter is worth around half a million dollars to the tourist industry over its lifetime.
Otters are important for Monterey, they do draw a lot of tourists.
A lot of the people going on kayaks want to come and see otters so it's an economical sort of draw.
One of the Monterey symbols, the sea otter, you see an otter on every sweater and T-shirt.
There's one right there, just going by me.
So, without them It's great for tourism, people love it, people want to sit out here.
I'll fill this patio all summer, just so they can see an otter.
Everyone agrees that protecting the ocean and its animals is important for Monterey.
The fishermen, locals and tourists rely on this.
Oh, I think it's important to protect not just the otters, but all of the wildlife that's here.
I mean, to preserve it as best as we possibly can, managing the human interests against the wildlife interests and, and trying to find some balance between those.
It would be tragic not to have our sea otters around here to watch, and everything should be protected.
If we don't, guess what, they're going to be extinct, we're going to be missing, missing it.
Yeah.
It is vital that people care about the otters, because ultimately their future depends on us.
Oh, look my friend.
Roll over.
Ha-ha! We're talking about you.
It happened in Monterey A long time ago I met her in Monterey In old Mexico Stars and steel guitars And luscious lips as red as wine