Billy and Susan Mail’s lives changed forever when a hungry otter showed up on their doorstep.

It was March 3, 2021 when Billy noticed the emaciated animal, who he later named Molly, snapping crabs near his home in Shetland.

Billy says restoring the little one to health has made him rediscover the joy he had lost following the recent death of his parents.

And it inspired wildlife filmmaker Charlie Hamilton-James to turn their unlikely friendship into an award-winning documentary.

How it all started

It all started when Billy, 57, was sitting in his house and spotted the little one diving from the nearby pontoon.

“Curiosity got the better of me and I decided to see how close I could get,” he says.

Billy knew something was wrong when the usually shy animal sat down next to him to eat his prey.

“She stopped eating, looked me straight in the eyes, then started again,” he says.

“I thought, ‘this isn’t right, a wild otter should have run away at that point’.”

Billy knew that a female otter had been found dead in the area recently, so he assumed the cub was his orphan.

“She was really skinny and emaciated, but she wasn’t unhealthy, she was just hungry,” he says.

A local wildlife reserve advised him to feed the animal on the condition that he did not domesticate it.

After gaining the approval of his wife Susan, Molly the Otter became a member of the Mail family.

“A breath of fresh air”

The couple say Molly came into their lives at a great time.

They had recently returned to Shetland, where Billy was from, shortly after losing both his parents in a short space of time.

On top of that, the coronavirus pandemic hit just as they were starting to build a new extension to their home.

Molly’s arrival was “a breath of fresh air” for both of them.

“There was a lot going on at the time and Molly showed up right in the middle of it all,” Billy says.

“She was a lovely distraction.”

Susan, 59, an airport manager, said she noticed a change in her husband’s mood.

“Seeing what he received by helping an animal in need was incredibly moving and touching,” she said.

But Susan says she had a rough start with Molly, with the little one rolling around in her flower pots and chasing her around the shed when Billy wasn’t there.

She said she was a little scared because she had never interacted with a wild animal before.

“The more I watched and learned, the more I saw that she wasn’t aggressive at all.” » said Suzanne.

The antics of the otter

Although she learned to coexist with Molly, Susan often found herself “bad cop” in the relationship.

One day, she finds a package containing dozens of colorful plastic balls addressed to Billy.

She said: “I thought ‘no chance, he didn’t buy them for her’ – and he did.”

A few minutes later, Molly was playing in her own mini ball pit.

It was Billy’s attempt to simulate playtime – something Molly would spend most of her day doing with other otters if she grew up in the wild.

Susan later discovered that the pool was just the beginning.

Instead of working on their long-awaited expansion, Billy built a miniature house for the otter, complete with a camera, Wi-Fi and a set of Mail family photos.

Billy and Molly hit the big screen

It didn’t take long for the others to notice Billy’s new friend.

Filmmaker Charlie Hamilton-James, who had visited Shetland regularly since he was a teenager, discovered Molly and arranged a meeting with the couple.

“I never knew who Charlie was,” Billy said. “But it turns out he was one of the best photographers at National Geographic.”

He approached the couple with the idea of ​​turning their unusual story into a film.

“I said ‘no chance’ and then we said ‘you know what, life is too short, let’s go’,” Billy said.

Billy and Molly: An Otter Love Story premiered in March at the South by Southwest festival in Texas.

Susan says seeing the final cut made her cry.

“My family says I’m the woman with a heart of stone, but I found it very moving.”

The film has since won an award at the Wildscreen Festival in Bristol and is nominated in several categories at the prestigious American Critics Choice Documentary Awards.

Was there a happy ending?

The couple says they always knew that, as cute and friendly as she was, Molly was a wild animal.

After months of spending every day with her, Billy decided to stop feeding the little one, giving him enough time to learn to fend for himself before winter.

“He knew when it was the right time to let her go,” Susan says.

Molly’s visits became more and more infrequent until they stopped completely.

Not knowing what had happened to her, Billy spent weeks worrying that she might die during the harsh winter that hit Shetland in 2022.

One snowy night, the camera at Molly’s small farm turned on automatically, alerting the couple to the presence of a visitor inside.

She was back and she wasn’t alone.

“We were really happy to see that she was still alive, healthy and in great condition. The bonus was that she was pregnant,” says Billy.

Molly gave birth to her own little one in “her house”, and the two still regularly visit the Mails’ garden.

“The one thing Molly taught me was compassion,” says Susan.

She also brought new joy to Billy’s life by making him fall in love with nature again – something he had long forgotten.

“Taking this otter who was cute and cuddly, but desperately needed help, and feeding her and nurturing her to adolescence and helping her become a full-grown adult, then she went off to hang out with her own family – watching this circle of life unfold, but also being a part of it, was incredibly rewarding,” he says.

Billy and Molly: An Otter Love Story premieres on Disney+ starting November 14 and airs November 15 on the National Geographic Channel.