In celebration of our Ten Year Anniversary we invited the more poetic of our supporters to toast our project in verse. Any kind of verse — silly, hilarious, seriously profound, profoundly sublime, all were welcome. We had only two rules…it had to rhyme (more or less), and it had to include either Lontra or Otter.
Here we celebrate our two winners (actually everyone who submitted is a big winner) of the contest. Many thanks and kudos to the delightful, the talented, the determined, Holly Groves and Jim Lang!
Holly Groves, right, sporting an otter chapeau! 
Jim Lang, otterly at peace in his studio.
This limerick is loosely based on the movie, “The Seal, The Otter and the Dead Gull” directed and produced by Dead Gull Productions.
There once was a seal named LouSeal
She swam fast and sleak as an eel
A dead gull did she spy
With her little eye
But an otter made away with her meal!
By Holly Groves
and…
It’s easy to rhyme things with “Otter”
like squatter for instance, or blotter
but Lontra I fear
is as a word that’s so queer
That nary a rhyme will hold water.
And where would you come across Lontra?
Poughkeepsie perhaps? or Torontra?
No! Abbott’s Lagoon!
By the light of the moon,
While quietly chanting a mantra.
So here’s to ten years of survival
and the sweet river otter revival
Hey Megan and Terence,
You cool otter parents,
We lovingly toast your arrival!
By Jim Lang
And we of Team Otter lovingly thank both of you for your good nature!
Happy Tenth Birthday, to Lontra canadensis Ecology Project!