Yesterday I was driving from Here to There in my little rural corner of the Ozark Mountains, and a big-ass beaver ran out into the road. Seriously, he was the size of a medium dog. I tried to swerve, but he swerved too, just right towards my tires. I got all of the poor beast, and then some. I just drove off, figuring the highway department and/or the scavengers would do the cleanup.
After I got home, it occurred to me that I might have left good money there on Highway 19. Beaver pelts are probably the main reason Europeans even came to Missouri. Of course, the days of widespread beaver harvesting for hats are long gone, but it appears there is still a niche market for beaver pelts. Missouri’s roadkill laws say that if I kill it, it’s mine, so legally anyway, if I had been thinking, I could have taken it home. Of course I know nothing about skinning animals and who wants a beaver carcass in their freezer while I try to figure things out.
Fortunately, it seems like beaver pelts only command about $20-30 these days, so it likely would have been more trouble than it’s worth. How would I even sell it? Call a hat maker and ask if they want me to pack it in dry ice and ship it to them?
Anyway, an interesting story and an interesting thought experiment. Hopefully my days of killing mammals on the road are over but, this is Missouri and: deer. So probably not.
In my almost 30 years of driving I have hit (that I can remember):
5 deer in 4 different cars (2 of the deer were simultaneous impacts: they were crossing the road nose-to-tail and I came around the corner and suddenly there were two airborne deer).
1 nutria
1 housecat
Several squirrels
A bat
1 skunk. That was fun. Not.
None of the deer totaled the car, although the two-for-one deal came close. I used duct tape and bailing wire – handy stuff, that – to put the front end bits mostly back together in more-or-less their original configuration, replaced the busted headlights and front marker lights, and drove my now much uglier car for another 2 years or so. The last deer I hit did so much damage that, even after I had it professionally repaired, there were enough bits of lingering weirdness and unsettling noises that made me not want to drive it anymore so I traded it for my current vehicle, which is the one I hit the cat in, so now there’s a cat-shaped hole in my lower grille that I should get fixed one of these days but so far haven’t found enough justification to do so.
On the subjects of Missouri roadkill and armadillos, I was surprised on my last drive across Missouri (on I-70) that a large percentage of the roadkill was armadillos. I knew they had migrated that far north but was surprised that there were so many. Easily more than all of the dead deer, skunk, raccoons and possums combined.
There is a children’s book, Brenda’s Beaver needs a Barber. Seriously, the author read it to his kids; they weren’t old enough to get the double entendre so it was just a silly story to them.
You know how to use Google if you want to see/read it.
I tried “A realistic photo of a hybrid between Equus asinus and Castor canadensis in its native habitat.” and was very confused why it thought the hybrid would be reading a book, until I realized I made the request in an existing session that involved an image of a person with a book, so the prompt was cross-contaminated.
I tried the prompt again in a fresh session
Then I tried “A realistic photo of a hybrid between Castor canadensis and a butt in its native habitat.”
This isn’t remotely true. Growing up the son a hunter, I’ve skinned probably more different kinds of animals than most. Skinning a beaver was far and away the hardest thing I’ve skinned.
I’m not disputing you or your experience, but I’m curious: what about a beaver poses extra difficulties vs a similar sized critter like an otter or racoon or ???
