Beavers Are NOT Rodents After All

18 November 2001, 17:37 GMT

Beaver Special Report

For centuries, beavers have been wrongly chastised and hunted down on the basis that they are nasty rodents, no better than their slippery cousin the dirty stinkin' rat.

"I'm a beaver," explained Sneezer, a 3 year old rodent yesterday. "I often get visits from my nervous muskrat cousin Rodney, who helps maintain a sort of commune on the other side of town. Very, very strange place. Very dark, very sleazy. I don't like the company he keeps."

"Sometimes," he added, "Rodney turns up at our place after 3am, stinking of sewage. I don't like to let him into our dam, but then he begins shouting the whole colony down until I relent. It's just so embarrassing."

So how does Sneezer explain his beaver-rodent dichotomy?

"It'sh sshimple," he retorted. "Okay, so we might scientifically speaking be rodents, but if you take that argument, you also have to take into account that millions of years ago, some beavers were as big as horses. Or bears, which are pretty much the same size."

"And," he added, "you know in nature, our work ultimately creates lush meadows, beautiful flood plains that trigger entire new ecosystems. We work in, with and for, the environment. What rat can make that sort of claim?"

"There's just no comparison," he explained. "This whole beaver oppression thing has dogged us for centuries. The beaver is a noble, hard working inquisitive creature. But when people see beavers, they immediately think 'rat'. I'm convinced that this was the real reason why Beaver College was renamed."

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