The Will Trout Website
An introduction by Chuck Tague
Sometime during the early years of the Nature Observer News the staff and I decided our publication needed more than the usual nature essays. We looked around for a writer/editor to spice up the Nature Observer with fiction, satire, character studies and other odd-ball pieces. Our search committee found the perfect person, Dimsdale, PA’s Will Trout, an odd, fictitious character.
Will entertained our readers with tales of the people and events in his home town until the end of The Nature Observer’s run in 2005. He also wrote several serious essays. Since then he failed in several new careers. Although he never caught on as a free-lance comedy writer, he did rise to head writer of a firm that published greeting cards for the “Everything for a Dollar” chain.
His failure at comedy is evident in the articles on this site. After one of Will’s comic limericks ended up on a birthday card, the greeting card company fired him. Incidentally, this was Will’s best selling item.
Each week, Will will add a story to the Dimsdale Chronicles. Most are rewrites from the Nature Observer News. Click on a title from the list below.
He will also periodically blog on other subjects and share some of his other work.
Will’s two latest endeavors are “A Field Guide to Fractured Bird Names” and a light-hearted photo essay he collaborated with me called What Birds Do.
Dimsdale Chronicles
Chapter 1, The Lake Veronica Fishaganza, November 29, 2008
Chapter 2, How Lake Veronica Got Its Name, December 2, 2008
Chapter 3, The Apparition, December 9, 2008
Chapter 4, A Dimsdale Christmas, December 17, 2008
Chapter 5, Jesse Duff’s Sure-fire Owl Call, December 23, 2008
Chapter 6, The True History of the Dimsdale Parks Department, December 30,
2008
Chapter 7, The Celebration of the One-horned Cow, January 6, 2009
Chapter 8, River Rats, January 13, 2009
Chapter 9, The Grinning ‘Possum Bar and Grill, January 20, 2009
Extra, New species of butterfly, Papilio steeleryoi, January 27, 2009
Chapter 10, Otis and the Owl, February 3, 2009
Chapter 11, A Dimsdale Love Story, February 10, 2009
Chapter 12, Frank’s Old Hat, February 17, 2009
Chapter 13, Jimmy Boliva, A Matter of Time, February 25, 2009
Chapter 14, Stefan, the Goose from Hell, March 3, 2009
Chapter 15, Dimsdale’s Famous Poet Remembered, April 1, 2009
Chapter 16, Arbor Day in Dimsdale, April 15, 2009
Chapter 17, My March of Triumph and Ultimate Justice, October 27, 2009