Richard Fein Intelligent Design To a trout a beaver is god, a demiurge builder of dams who summons waters to rise and create whole worlds out of meadows barren of troutkind. Trees are felled by divine incisors and aqueducts scooped by those same lordly teeth to float lumber to their appointed places and turn once heaven-high towers into planks of the grand design. But there are even more beaver wonders. Amid the lacustrine miracle the beaver constructs a cathedral of logs, a heavenly lodge where that god ascends to some higher cosmos far beyond what water-bound trout can ever hope to fathom. What cleverness. And what purpose. For without purpose clever creates only intricate chaos. And what could that purpose be other than to give trout dominion over these waters. But this trout's world is truly a creation of a beaver's instinct to dampen trickling waters by damming them. A universe built by seemingly brainless obsession. Yet there is divine mercy in being fishbrained in finding a purpose behind creation, even the wrong one, in never consenting that only by happenstance aimless trout drifted into this beaver's world, just flotsam in that indifferent rodent's eye. There is an intelligent kindness to all troutkind in keeping them buoyed above the mystery haunting the deepest waters of the beaver's lake.

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