Oregon’s state animal is one hard-working critter, according to environmental writer Frances Backhouse.
In the Canadian author’s most recent book, “Once They Were Hats: In Search of the Mighty Beaver” (ECW Press, 256 pages, $16.95) she calls beavers “ecosystem engineers” and a “classic keystone species … (an) indispensable creator of conditions that support entire ecological communities.”
Since the beaver’s adoption as the Oregon state animal in 1969, its numbers have increased, and “Once They Were Hats” is timely in examining how humans and beavers can coexist peacefully. The book was a finalist for the Lane Anderson Award for Excellence in Canadian Science Writing.
Backhouse will make two appearances in Oregon this week: at 7 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 8, at Broadway Books, 1714 N.E. Broadway, and at 5:45 p.m. at Oregon State University’s LaSells Stewart Center, 875 S.W. 26th St., Corvallis, as part of The Wetlands Conservancy’s “Beaver Tales” art exhibit and sale.
She’ll return in May for two more readings: during the May 6 Evening Art Walk in Seaside, at Beach Books, 616 Broadway, and at 1 p.m. Sunday, May 7, at the Oregon Zoo, 4001 S.W. Canyon Road.
Here’s an excerpt from “Once They Were Hats.”
***
ECW Press
The beaver has a major image problem. A chubby rodent with goofy buckteeth and a tail that looks like it was run over by a tractor tire — it’s no wonder beavers prefer to work under cover of darkness. They’re ungainly on land and ride so low in the water when they’re swimming that from a distance they can be easily mistaken for floating deadwood.
At best, some might say, the beaver is an icon of insipidness: although often lauded as a paragon of diligence and industriousness, the beaver could just as well be described as a monogamous, workaholic homebody.
At worst, beavers are embarrassing. Not only has their name been co-opted as smutty slang for female genitalia (a usage that first appeared in print in the 1920s), but they’re also wimps in comparison to charismatic national animals like the American eagle, the English lion and China’s giant panda.
Unofficially, the beaver has represented Canada since before the country achieved full nationhood. In 1851, 16 years before Confederation, the Province of Canada’s newly independent postal system issued its first postage stamp, the Three-Pence Beaver, which depicted the eponymous animal crouched on a bank beside a cascading stream. But when it came to devising a coat of arms for Canada in 1921, the beaver didn’t make the cut. In the blunt words of Under-Secretary of State Thomas Mulvey, a member of the design committee, “It was decided that as a member of the Rat Family, a Beaver was not appropriate.” (Actually, beavers belong to their own, exclusive family, the Castoridae, and are only distant cousins of rats and other members of the Rodentia order, but such distinctions probably wouldn’t have swayed Mulvey.)
The only reason the beaver eventually gained official standing as Canada’s national animal may have been that Americans were threatening to usurp the emblem. Apparently no Canadians had noticed when Oregon, long known as the Beaver State because of its fur-trade history, adopted the beaver as a state mascot in 1969. When New York announced plans to do the same a few years later, Canada finally asserted its own claim. In 1975, Parliament passed Bill C-373, “An Act to provide for the recognition of the Beaver (Castor canadensis) as a symbol of the sovereignty of Canada.”
However, a fancy title doesn’t guarantee respect. In 2011, Senator Nicole Eaton stood up in the Red Chamber and called for the beaver to be stripped of its honours and replaced by the polar bear. Canada’s symbol of sovereignty was, she said, nothing more than a “dentally defective rat” and a “toothy tyrant” that “wreaks havoc on farmlands, roads, lakes, streams and tree plantations.” Her denunciation hinted at a revenge motive, for she also mentioned her ongoing battle to keep beavers from damaging the dock at her summer cottage.
I have never outright scorned beavers, but I did, for a long time, take them for granted and underestimate their worth. “What are you writing about?” friends would ask when they found out I was working on a new book. “Beavers,” I’d mutter, in the early days, and change the subject for fear of hearing the word “boring” in response. Yet I quickly came to realize that beavers aren’t boring. I just didn’t know how fascinating they would turn out to be.
Excerpted from “Once They Were Hats” by Frances Backhouse. (c)2015 by Frances Backhouse. All rights reserved. Published by ECW Press Ltd. www.ecwpress.com
Our editors found this article on this site using Google and regenerated it for our readers.
