Vermont Beavers Gone Wild (Idle Words)#

11.10.2002

A coworker wrote in tonight to warn us that the local beavers have gone on a rampage - they are apparently on the move around her lakefront camp (Vermont-speak for a summer cottage), looking for a new home, and scarfing down every tree in sight. A couple of smaller trees have already fallen on her campsite, and the creatures are just getting warmed up. This is alarming stuff - I know that locusts do it, swarming bees do it. I know that even educated fleas do it. But I didn't realize that beavers are liable to gang up, hit the road, and start felling timber like some marauding Mongol horde.

I'm not too worried about a team of beavers descending on Brandon -- they can't be worse than these damned box elder bugs, and at least the cats would find them more palatable -- but a principle is a principle. Animals should stay in their habitat, lay low, and not make trouble, instead of roaming around the countryside sowing terror. What next, wild herds of moose? Timberwolves?

That's not to say I wouldn't heartily welcome a large pack of something with a voracious appetite for dead leaves and box elder bugs. Come to Brandon, come to Brandon, you will not go hungry here.