Just stop shooting us, please! 

By Amanda Beaver

I thought it was time you heard it from the beavers.  Honestly - we’ve just been beavering away here for the last 20 years or so — trying to get by and help our neighbours - doing the stuff we beavers do. But meanwhile what a fuss has been going on!  

It was lonely at first - looking for mates in an almost empty catchment but luckily it turned out there were a few of us coming from different directions - you could smell the signs - little bits of cut stick floating down the river that gave you hope of a mate upstream - that kind of thing.  The lucky ones of us, we met our mates and got settled - us pioneers - we did our best to make homes and bring up our kits in these remote places - miles from our original home. 

I don’t like talking about how we got here - that trap I so stupidly walked into - the man with the beard and the ponytail - but to be fair he did his best to be kind - the long journey in a cage with nothing but apples to eat - the long stay in the tiny enclosure. The humans - those ones, they were mostly kind enough too but it was all disorienting and not a happy time. There was a nice young female human - I really felt she cared - felt my pain.  Promised me one day I would go to a lovely new home - and it turned out to be true, although there were times when I doubted it. 

Anyway - I digress.  

To begin with they wanted to get rid of us because they though we might be the wrong kind of beaver. Some stuff about race.  I picked this up from snatched conversations on the waterside when I was chilling in the lodge during the day. The humans think we are asleep but actually half the time we are awake just listening out. They also have no idea how acute our hearing is - or our gift for languages - well mine anyway. My mate never really got the hang of English - and frankly his German isn’t that good either. (I discovered this when some German visitors wandered past the lodge one afternoon. He only picked up about half of what they were saying - which was actually no loss - their conversation pretty boring.) But luckily I’ve always had an gift for it - its as  instinctive  to me as building dams.

But all that is beside the point. The fact is that they wanted to get rid of us for not being the right race. This was the kind of conversation  that made German humans twitchy - but apparently the authorities  here were not so worried. They thought we were mongrels and should be replaced by the “right kind of beaver” - or preferably none at all. (We weren’t licensed either - whatever that meant. They didn’t like that).  Our new humans - the ones who kept bringing people to see us and what we had built - the ones who seemed to like us - they thought we were the right kind of beaver because we were not too inbred. Our mixed ancestry was a strength in their view. But the authorities  - they didn’t agree.

Well -  I sometimes get messages from relations downstream.  There is plenty of food down there apparently  - humans grow huge fields full of carrots - so there’s no need to go hungry if other things are running out - but they don’t always like us. Some of our cousins have been shot - it’s brutal.  The humans make a breach in the dam and then lie in wait with their guns for one of us to come and repair it. It’s a mean trick. 

I don’t like talking about it. 

The officials say it is fine to shoot us - I heard through the gossip channels and bitching backwaters - they now say since we  are hybrids our genetic base is good they can shoot us without worrying about our “conservation status”.  Excuse me!  Don’t you think there might be any other considerations?  Besides - how do you know you are not reducing our gene pool?  

One minute they have to trap us out because we are skanky mongrels, and the next they can shoot us with impunity because we have hybrid vigour. Heads they win tails we lose.

It’s a shame because I’ve heard from visiting animals that we are wanted in other parts of this country that I have now discovered is called Scotland. The fish that swim past are crying out for us to help them out by making deeper pools with more food in them. (They mean insects - well or water plants I suppose in some cases). The otters say the other rivers are short of burrows  for them to have babies in. They can’t dig, otters - so they like to rent our old burrows. Sometimes we even take them in as lodgers in the edges of the lodge we are living in although we make them leave before the kits are born. It’s not usually a problem because they never stay anywhere for long. Restless creatures although they do like our pools because they say the fish are big and plentiful. 

The birds and animals keep showing up here and telling us what a lack of food and stuff  there is in other places. The heron comes here and eats frogs. I shudder to think being a vegan myself. There are a lot of frogs - thousands probably -  but it doesn’t mean they don’t have feelings. 

The point is, that we like being helpful. We don’t want to get in the way - but we can see that this country needs us. All this drainage is causing problems and we can help fix that. We can build dams and slow down the ditches and burns so they don’t make the flooding and droughts worse.  I once heard someone say we are good at sequestering carbon, whatever that means.

It isn’t just sad that humans keep shooting our relations. iI’s stupid frankly.  We want to help you and you just don’t get that. 

I have heard that we were once here before - hundreds of years ago. (My friendly human brings people to see our home almost every day and I hear what he tells them). I can’t help wondering why it is okay to shoot us for “damaging agricultural land” when it isn’t okay to shoot farmers for “damaging nature”.  I mean it’s just a question. Personally I'm against anyone shooting anyone for any reason. But  they put all that stuff on the fields - I’ve seen them, and some of it runs off into the water. The fish don’t like it. Some of it kills insects, including bees. The soil runs into the ditches and rushes downstream into the river and then the sea. Soil is needed on the fields but it is harmful in the water. We can trap some of it behind dams, but not if you keep taking them out! 

I mean we came here at the same time as humans (so I have learnt) thousands of years ago.  We had one vision of how the land should be - and the humans had another. The human's view prevailed obviously, but I think we all know where that is going to take us.

To hell in a handcart.

Some of you know that. We’ll do what we can to help, but you really have to stop shooting us. Please.