"And the quick brown rat skittered between the hooves of the hulking bovines". The words were in my heart and on my lips but I could not say them. First of all it is impolite for little rats to refer to Boeings as bovines, and secondly there is more important dialogue on the tower frequency of a hub airport.

The Boeing pilots seldom go out of their way to speak to us when we cross paths in various corners of different airports. Some feel that we are beneath them because we fly freight rather than people, and we do it in single engine airplanes. Others think we are somewhere between stupid and crazy, for flying single engine airplanes at night, and in almost any weather. Go figure.

Every now and then one of those pilots will break the ice and say something like "are those Caravans really fun to fly? A lot of things run through my mind as I frame my reply with a smile. The plane is as simple as many grass airport planes but has a turbo- prop engine at the front. I sometimes joke that it is a cross between a Cessna 172 and a Shop- Vac. It has a gross weight of almost 9000 lbs, but its climb and cruise numbers spell "small Cessna".

It is comfortable, not agile. It is steady, not fast. I suppose that to refer to it as truck- like would compliment the designers, because that is exactly what they wanted; the airplane's design goal was to carry freight cheaply within a 200 mile radius. The Cessna Caravan, a simple and reliable airplane flown by just one pilot, has done this job well for more than 15 years.

So is it fun to fly? It can be, but so too can Boeings, I imagine. Remember that these are all work planes, that the best way to work long and be prosperous is to avoid unusual situations. With the Caravan, we often are asked to do things that would be unusual to ask of a Boeing. At big airports, the kind that are cluttered with airliners, the pilots often watch as the controllers bring us in close and tight, fitting us into small breaks in the main flow of traffic.

In relative terms we are small and agile. The controllers know that our load of boxes will not complain about steeply banked turns just before landing, and the harshness of the last minute deceleration, drop, and stop. If the big guys want to do this sort of thing, they have to do it on their own time, not at work. I think sometimes that they feel a spark of envy.

It was one evening last week when I was brought in on an approach to land to the east even though the tailwind would have been too strong for a safe landing. The plan was that I would break off the approach and land to the south on one of the two parallel main runways. As it turned out, I was squeezed into the flow of departing traffic on the right- side runway.

Just before reaching the airport, the controller said something like "...Cleared visual approach, runway 22 Right. Make close- in right base leg, Maintain best forward airspeed. One departure ahead of you, now taking the runway."

Heading east with the wind, flying fast, and descending sharply, I turned south to land across the wind. The controller's timing had worked perfectly, and I would be able to drop in just behind one plane, and another plane would be rolled into the takeoff position behind me as soon as I passed the runway threshold. I would be clear of the runway by the time the next plane would be ready for takeoff.

I looked at the flow of landing traffic on the left runway, and flow of planes to and from the terminal. I looked down and ahead at the line of planes waiting for takeoff, all facing me as I whirled through my turn and rolled out with the ailerons and rudder set for the crosswind landing.

I felt like a fat barn rat, looking out from under the feed bunker at a chunk of ear corn that had fallen from the silage wagon. It's not my barn and not my feed, but here just for a second, is my chance to make a quick dash among the clumsy bovines and grab a prize.

Yes it is fun to fly Caravans, but maybe it helps to be a little crazy too.