Over at my day job, conservation journalist Roberta Scruggs makes an impassioned case for a top-to-bottom reform of the Maine Warden Service. A former writer for the Portland Newspapers and independent reporter, Roberta has been writing about the Warden Service for something like two decades, and she's earned more than a few enemies among wardens who didn't appreciate the way she kept pressing awkward questions. She also won many friends among wardens who respected her doggedness. In the process, Roberta uncovered real scandals and performed a true service for the State of Maine, since the whole purpose of having an independent press is to hold public servants accountable to the people who pay their salaries. (In the interest of full disclosure: after I finished writing The Poacher's Son, I submitted a copy to her for feedback, and she helped me correct several errors.) I haven't yet read the George Smith essay she alludes to in the September issue of the Maine Sportsman, but I'll be watching my mailbox as will, I'm sure, more than a few game wardens.