Sy Otter was always a procrastinator. “I’m a perfectionist!” he would always say. Nevertheless he was always late or incomplete – unless it was something fun. Sy was the most handsome water mammal in the wildwood. The beavers and the muskrats all envied him. True, one old industrious beaver called Blair resented his “play first” attitude. Once, Blair surfaced in the pond near where Sy was floating, basking in the warm sun, and offered, 
“Break those big projects down into simple tasks Mr. Perfectionist!” Then he slapped his broad tail on the surface for punctuation, and dove down to the underwater entrance of his spotless home.
“Beavers are so anal.” muttered Sy, and he returned to his fantasies about his lady friend Samantha. It was mating season and procrastination happily wasn’t an option. But first, he’d have to do his tax return and that meant sucking up to Big Al the gar, the only accountant in the beaver pond in Piscah creek.
The other fish all hated Big Al. He was slow and alligator ugly, and when he was hungry he ate their babies. During tax season though, Big Al stayed up late every night and worked very hard – mostly for the land critters who had taxable income. The pond dwellers generally swam beneath the reporting threshold because they were very poor.
By far the wildwood’s wealthiest inhabitant was Max the hedge hog and fund manager. Even wily old Blair had his life savings in his care and was quite pleased with an overall return of 8.2%. Even Blair’s partner Peyton had recently moved his small account over to Max’s stewardship. Most of the wildwood’s citizens, however, just lived day to day. Max always stayed in touch with his customers (using the birds that were on his staff.) He was very proactive on his clients’ behalf but most of the older animals were very nervous after the recession. And now, Max was a little nervous too. He was pretty sure that there would be new regulations on his bonus awards and they would take time to work around. So he just curled up in a ball and waited…