It will be recalled, in the otter competitive battle between the forces of good and evil, the following war near the water (versus a rumble in the jungle) occurred on CNN’s “Paula Zahn Now,” for June 1, 2007. The topic was a new video allegedly showing Nessie, which was run in the final moments of her program. It was originally scheduled to be five minutes long, but Joe Nickell and I were cut short by an earlier story, as is often the case.

At the time, my old coauthor buddy Jerry Clark noted that what was operating here, in counterpoint to my view, was: The Nickell principle: “We will take up an existence by its otters.”

Coincidentially, another good friend, Anomalist Books publisher Patrick Huyghe emailed me: “Joe was otterly ridiculous.”

Hey, what are friends for, if not to support one another with an otter side of humor, humm?

Well, here I find myself this last weekend, in Point Pleasant, West Virginia, sharing the stage, once again, with Joe Nickell. Of course, he’s not evil but merely from the darkside. LOL. He was there to talk about, not otters, but owls.

One does have to be careful with whom they hang out, of course, but Joe’s okay. Since he is a magician, however, I did check for my wallet after our casual Lowe Hotel almost two-hour conversation.

Never can tell what you might end up doing with people. After all, I coauthored Cryptozoology A to Z (NY: Simon and Schuster) with Jerome Clark in 1999.

Then, I coauthored The Field Guide to Lake Monsters, Sea Serpents, and Other Mystery Denizens of the Deep (NY: Tarcher/Penguin) with Patrick Huyghe in 2003.

Finally, it must be disclosed, I even wrote the Foreword to Lake Monster Mysteries: Investigating the World’s Most Elusive Creatures by Benjamin Radford and Joe Nickell, a skeptically-minded book published in 2006 by the University Press of Kentucky.

Magic trick revealed: I pulled a fast one on Joe. After noting that he was going to be much taller in photos, I jumped up on a step on Point Pleasant’s Main Street to “equalize” the framing of the imagery (above). With the coloring of the street lamps, I think they came out rather well.