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baritone, “Swamp devil
     die young.”
    I wiped the water from my camera, while the kid disappeared toward his father. Ready now, here they come. One of the cages
     was opened, and three otters waddled toward the water. After that, it was bedlam.
    The otters swam through the water, ran along the banks, and wrestled with one another in grass and sunshine. More otters were
     shown the water, and they knew what to do with it. The DNR man with the bullhorn shouted something about “rotating the crowd
     so everyone can see the otters.” Nobody paid him any mind. Instead they slithered under the rope barricade and plunged toward
     the banks of Sweet’s Marsh.
    The program was just getting under way, but I packed my gear and walked to the car. I’ll go back on some cold, rainy day in
     autumn, a few months from now. I judge it will take that long to get the ninth-grade boys back in their cages and for the
     yellow school buses to get loaded and back to Tripoli.
    What can be concluded from this event? First, I’m glad the river otters are back in Iowa, and the people responsible for this
     are to be applauded without end. I truly mean that. I am amplified in spirit just knowing the otters are out there giving
     it a try.
    Second, if I were a political candidate, I’d use my campaign contributions to corner the market on river otters and prodigiously
     announce the times and locations of their releases. Then, I’d get a sound system that works; I’d tell everybody how much I love river otters; I’d promise that we will never kill them, especially the babies. Furthermore, I’d promise that we will add more school bus drivers to supplement the existing twelve and that all books dealing with cooperative living will be burned at Sweet’s Marsh as a testament to free speech. I’d be elected president of the galaxy.
    Finally, in light of all the fun we had with the otter release at Sweet’s Marsh, I’m rethinking some of my earlier recommendations about Iowa developing a tourist industry.

A Canticle for
Roadcat
    ______________________________________
    I had a friend… and his name was Roadcat. He was young when I was young and old when I was middle-aged. Still, our lives overlapped
     for a while, and I am grateful for that.
    He was more than a friend, really. Friend and colleague is perhaps a better image. In fact, I sometimes introduced him to
     strangers as my research associate. We worked together on cold, gray afternoons, poring over books and papers, while the wood
     stove quietly crackled its way through another Iowa winter.
    Sometimes he lay upon my lap and served as a round and honest book rest. He purred and occasionally reached out to turn pages
     for me, randomly and with a keen appreciation of the virtues surrounding leisurely scholarship. In the spring, as the days
     warmed, he moved to the desk, clearing a place for himself by pushing to the floor paper, pens, staplers, and other implements
     of a writer’s trade.
    He came from a field of long grass behind our house in Columbus, Ohio. Just a few inches in length, he walked along the cement
     of one of those smarmy subdivisions that make your teeth curl.
    A neighbor’s child abused him. He fought back, as any of us would, and the child’s mother screamed something about rabid cats.
     My wife observed that the child deserved something more than he got and brought the kitty home for the customary saucer of
     milk.
    I set him on my lap and said, “This is going to be a fine-looking cat.” But we were on the move in those times and had already
     promised our daughter one of the kittens from a litter down the street. So the migrant was fed and sent along.
    I sat down to read the paper, glanced up, and he had reappeared on the opposite side of the house at the patio screen door.
     He looked in at me, and I looked back. He coughed continuously and badly, tried to cry, but the effort was soundless. I picked
     him up, looked him over with a modest expertise gained