Maybe I've been watching too many reality TV shows. Today on the way to town, we saw a big fat beaver. He sat up on his haunches and surveyed the grassy knoll around the culvert from whence he came. And all I could think about was: that pelt would probably bring a pretty penny.
Yeah. I didn't think of beaver dams, or their tails flapping to compact mud, or their chompers gnawing down trees, or the fact that they are a keystone species, as our biology textbook tells us. Nope. I thought about how much Mr. Beaver's fur coat would bring me if I forcibly disrobed him with a sharp knife.
Some of my favorite shows are on TLC or Discovery or NatGeo or The History Channel. The ones about folks living off the land above the arctic circle. Of course, I forget that they don't take a daily bath or shower, that they have to cut firewood to stay warm, that their food is whatever they shoot and skin and butcher and freeze and cook. So their lifestyle doesn't look so rosy from that angle.
I almost fainted when I realized their distance from the nearest 44 oz. Diet Coke.
There have been several stories--in the last year--of beavers killing people. Apparently people get too close (as they try to take a picture) and then the beaver bites them in some main artery, and they bleed to death.
ReplyDeleteI'd stay clear if I were you...
Sioux,
ReplyDeleteSo thoughtful you are, Madam, in keeping me out of harm's and killer beavers' way. Or...are you simply attempting to horn in on the new pelt sideline at my proposed handbasket factory?