English: Class 10 (First Flight) — Chapter 6: Mijbil the Otter

• SPCA Guidelines: Owning a pet is a lifetime commitment requiring family consensus, proper care, vaccinations, toilet training, and socialization.
• Environmental Comparison: Contrast between the marshes of Basra (wet, hot/cool, flooded) and London (temperate, busy, multi-storeyed with parks).

In 1956, Maxwell travels to Southern Iraq. While waiting for his mail in Basra, he receives an otter as a gift from a friend, brought by two Arabs in a squirming sack.

• Appearance: Resembled a small, medievally-conceived dragon with symmetrical mud-armour scales, later classified as Lutrogale perspicillata maxwelli (Maxwell's otter).
• Water Obsession: Mijbil goes wild with joy in water, splashing in the bathtub, and learns to turn on the chromium taps with his paws.
• Playfulness: He invents games with a rubber ball, juggles marbles on his belly, and plays with a terrapin shell.

• The Box Incident: To fly, Mijbil must be kept in an 18-inch square box. He tears the inner lining, injuring himself and causing blood to trickle out.
• Flight Chaos: Released in the aircraft, Mijbil escapes, causing panic among passengers who mistake him for a rat. A kind air hostess helps calm the situation, and Mijbil eventually returns to Maxwell's lap.

• Compulsive Habits: On walks, Mijbil insists on stepping in the center of paving blocks, touching every seventh railing, and galloping along a school's low wall.
• Public Curiosity: Londoners, unfamiliar with otters, make wild guesses, calling him a baby seal, squirrel, walrus, hippo, beaver, bear cub, leopard, or even a brontosaur.

We use would or used to to describe repeated past actions. However, for past states or situations, only used to is correct.

• Action: "Mij would follow me without a lead." / "He used to follow me."
• State/Situation: "We used to believe there were ghosts." (Incorrect: "We would believe...")

Nouns can act as modifiers to describe other nouns (e.g., the London streets, the Tigris marshes, iron railings).

• A pool of blood
• A cloud of dust
• Flakes of snow
• A gust of wind

The fog comes
on little cat feet.

It sits looking
over harbour and city
on silent haunches
and then moves on.

• Extended Metaphor: The poet compares the fog to a cat.
• Points of Comparison:
  • Arrives silently ("on little cat feet").
  • Sits quietly observing ("on silent haunches").
  • Departs stealthily ("and then moves on").
• Form: Written in free verse (no regular rhyme scheme or rhythm).