Fennimore county’s river, the Mighty Muskrat, is usually well behaved. In our earliest days, fishing and hunting along its banks provided a welcome source of protein and variety for the frontier diet. Later its waters were a cool retreat during the summer doldrums and a pleasant recreation place much closer and more convenient than the lakes beyond Fahnstock. Even in winter its snakey course became a skating rink and race course for horse-drawn sleighs.

Then there are those maverick times when the Muskrat is downright unneighborly.

Howard has written about our kindly encounters with a gentle Muskrat. But as the spring thaw feeds its ego, I suspect he’ll have something to say about the downside of living by a river.