I chastised, I got results

Last week I wrote a post in which I criticized – ever so gently of course – my fellow book club members for not supporting beaverlikemammals.com by posting their BLM sightings. Well, it seems like my comments worked. I received a submission today from my friend Laura. Thanks Laura:

My name is Laura and I live very close to Sperry Marine in Charlottesville. Often, on my trek home, I drive by Sperry’s huge lawn on 29 and lots of times, I see one or even two of the cute critters doing what appears to be grass munching and scrounging.

I am grateful for your web site because now I know what a beaver looks like and don’t have to ask, “Is that a beaver?!” It is evident that the critter speaking with Abe Lincoln on a sleep aid TV commercial is indeed, a beaver (this commercial cracks me up).

Posted in Charlottesville, Virginia | 1 Comment

Oprah should have a BLM of the month club

I am a member of an extremely awesome book club. The club has plenty of members who, I happen to know for a fact, see plenty of BLMs. But I have not receieved one single BLM sighting from a club member, hint hint, nudge nudge. Until now, that is. Saskia wins the prize for being the first book club member to really come through for beaverlikemammals.com. Yay Saskia! She reports that her daughter, Jessica, spied a BLM eating Begonias off the picnic table on their deck. What a sassy BLM! This occurred in Charlottesville on August 8th. And check out this awesome photo:

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Thanks again Saskia! Next month, one of our discussion questions should be “What was unique about the setting of the book and how did it enhance or take away from the story? And, further more, why have no other book club members submitted any sightings to beaverlikemammals.com?”

Posted in Charlottesville, Virginia | 2 Comments

My aunt has beavers in her yard

My Aunt Holly writes:

We definitely have a groundhog family living waaaay out back under the tall trees behind that tall tree that fell last year. This really doesn’t surprise me because I had “spied” a rather large creature earlier this summer. Anyway, as you know, I don’t sleep well and am up at rather strange hours. Early Sunday I saw this contigent of them moving about and was quite excited. The little ones are very sweet. I think they will be very safe back there – it’s secluded and Lord know’s there is plenty of natural food.

Posted in Connecticut | Leave a comment

A BLM triptych

Kate writes in with three (3!!) BLM-related photos:

1. The first is just a hole, I know, but I saw the BLM (a groundhog) go into it. I was sitting in a friend’s backyard at a bbq in Charlottesville, Virginia when the sighting happened. I immediately rushed over to where the BLM was spotted and got down on the ground and crawled around under the neighbors back porch hoping to see it again. I didn’t. But here is a picture of its hole.

2. A a statue of a BLM that I saw in Portland, Oregon. Portland is known as “beaver nation” because the Oregon state athletic mascot is…the beaver. I’m not sure if this BLM statue has anything to do with that or not, but it was very pretty and definitely beaver-like.

3. Lastly, here is a wild duck that I saw in a marsh in Charleston, South Carolina. At first glance I think ducks are probably not beaver-like, but they do swim and thrive in similar kinds of habitats and, like beavers, have a waterproof skin covering. Plus, this duck was really nice looking.

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Posted in Charlottesville, Oregon, South Carolina, Virginia | Leave a comment

BLMs are statuesque

Whitney comes through for the BLM team! (See post Machu Beacchu.)

A cell phone photo of frighteningly large beavers (statutes), taken on my recent visit to Portland Or., as promised. How proud I am to be from the Beaver State. I think these beavers evidence that I am not the only proud Beaver Stater, since these beautiful likenesses are right in the heart of downtown.

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Posted in Oregon | Leave a comment

Bea-Ville Weekly

We have achieved our first press!

And have received a response to it:

OK, this has to be one of the strangest web sites I have ever…been to. I was reading the C-Ville Weekly, and there was an article about this website. I probably laughed more reading that article then I have in ages. Aside from the brilliant humour that was employed in writting that article, I laughed so hard because I have always wondered “hey is that a beaver??” whenever I’ve seen a small furry animal, and to think there are other people who have thought the very same….and then made a website about it…it’s priceless. Anyways I dont know if anyone else has mentioned this place before, but I’ve seen a brown furry creature which I do believe to be a beaver while jogging around 29 and Hydraulic Road. Just when I passed the 7-11, before reaching Seminole Trail Shopping Center (which is on the right side, and I saw this beaver twice on the left side going north). I was actually quite excited when I saw this beaver (I sure hope it was a beaver) but it ran away when it saw me. While jogging back towards Hydraulic Road the beaver was again there..and again ran away when it saw me. Anyways, this is a nice, weird, eccentric little website and…I am shocked so many people have seen a small furry animal and said “hey is that a beaver?!?

Posted in General | Leave a comment

I finally got a camera phone

And I took this photo of a BLM on the corner where McIntire intersects 250. I was driving at the time, and leaning out the window, and I can’t believe it worked, but you definitely can see the little BLM in the middle of the picture to the right. I often see a BLM at this location, I assume it’s the same one each time, and I am happy to see he/she made it through most of the summer without being run over. It seems like such a dangerous place to live. If I didn’t have to work for a living, and also had the ability to communicate with animals, I would like to have a job being a crossing guard for BLMs. There is so much I could teach them such as How To Cross A Road Safely and How To Live By A Major Road Without Losing Life and Limb. Those would be some of my course titles.

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Posted in Charlottesville, Virginia | 1 Comment

That which sits in the shadow of its tail

My friends Kate and Anoop are on vacation in India and Kate sent this submission of an adorable Indian BLM:

Here is either a chipmunk or an Indian squirrel that Anoop and I saw today in Bangalore, India, across the street from his grandmother’s house. It is hard to see but it has stripes on its back like an American chimpmunk though it is built more like an American squirrel. Actually, we saw four of them but this is the only one in a picture. They are surprisingly shy for living in the center of a city of 10 million people. Apparently sometimes they get all rabid and bite people, but I think this one is pretty safe.

This submision got me to thinking, what is the difference between a chipmunk and a squirrel? I know what a standard American chipmunk looks like, and I know what a common American squirrel looks like, but I have also seen something in America called a ground squirrel, which frankly looked rather like a chipmunk, and so now having thought about it I am all confused as to what is going on.

So, I headed over to Wikipedia, and since I want this site to be an educational one, I will now pass on what I learned:

According to Wikipedia, “Chipmunk is the common name for any small squirrel-like rodent species of the genus Tamias in the family Sciuridae” and “A squirrel is a small or medium-sized rodent of the family Sciuridae…The Sciuridae family also include flying squirrels, as well as ground squirrels such as the chipmunks, prairie dogs, and woodchucks.” So basically, chipmunks and squirrels are two BLMs in the same family. Also, chipmunks can evidently be referred to as “ground squirrels”, and so can prairie dogs and woodchucks, which makes no sense because neither of those animals is anything like a squirrel, as far as I am concerned.

As I mentioned previously, I have encountered an animal that I think is actually called a “ground squirrel” and out of curiosity, I looked it up as well: “The ground squirrels are all members of the Sciuridae most closely related to the genus Marmota and included in the tribe Marmotini. It includes six known genera. Although a type of ground squirrel, the chipmunks of the genus Tamias frequently spend time in trees.”

I found this entry to be rather uninformative, as well as rather lacking, gramatically.

In conclusion:

  1. Kate, in reference to your submission, it seems it would be correct for you to have said:
    1. “Here is a chipmunk…”
    2. “Here is an Indian squirrel…”
    3. “Here is a single entity which is a chipmunk AND an Indian squirrel…”

    and PS, how do you know where the squirrel/chipmunk’s grandmother lives?

  2. The word squirrel comes from the Latin word sciurus which comes from the Greek word skiouros which is a compound of two words and can be loosely translated to mean “That which sits in the shadow of its tail”.
  3. And, finally, the submitted photos:

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Posted in India, International | Leave a comment

BLMs not iPhone worthy?

From an Apple press release:

CUPERTINO, Calif., June 20 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — Apple(R) today announced that iPhone(TM) users will be able to enjoy YouTube’s originally-created content on their iPhones when they begin shipping on June 29. To achieve higher video quality and longer battery life on mobile devices, YouTube has begun encoding their videos in the advanced H.264 format, and iPhone will be the first mobile device to use the H.264-encoded videos. Over 10,000 videos will be available on June 29, and YouTube will be adding more each week until their full catalog of videos is available in the H.264 format this fall.

I couldn’t help but notice that beaverlikemammals.com’s stunning footage of a REAL beaver swimming around is not yet available on the iPhone. I guess the video was not deemed worthy of being included in the first round of H.264 conversions. Harumph! It will be interesting to see at what point it does get converted. I suppose it’s sort of an indirect way of measuring the importance of BLMs in our society.

Posted in General | Leave a comment

Machu Beacchu

I just got this fabulous submisison from my old friend Whitney Huston, who I went to college with, and have not talked to in ages. This submission is exciting for so many reasons. First, it was nice to hear from Whitney. Second, she lives out in California somewhere and I am happy to know that news of beaverlikemammals.com has traveled that far. Third, this qualifies as our second international sighting, and Peru is very exotic. Woo hoo!

Attached is a photo of Sam Douglas having a chat with a beaver-like mammal. The beaver-like mammal photograph was taken at Machu Picchu not so long ago. It was a very cute BLM, one was more chatty then the other (probably b/c the other was napping). They were friendly too – very unphased by all of the human attention they were getting.

PS the animal is actually a chinchilla, according to the guides there (overheard, since we didn’t hire any) and although they (the guides) are notorious for making shit up (or at least it seemed to us), they might be right. Which makes this not as much a BLM, and more like a chinchilla. Even if it’s not a chinchilla, it admittedly looks more like a rabbit than a beaver. But, I wanted to submit something and this was the only sighting I had on film. Being from Oregon though, which is, as I’m sure you know, the beaver state, I’ve seen my fair share of actual beavers. I just don’t have any caught on tape.

Thanks so much for the submission Whitney! And if you are ever home in Oregon, please keep an eye out for any beavers you might want to post about.

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Posted in International, Peru | 1 Comment