Has anyone seen a Beaver in the wild before?
The head Beaver hunter beamed at a small group of us tourists who had signed up for Beaver Patrol. She was an eccentric-looking pink-haired creature clad in expensive yet trampy-looking outdoor clothes.
My Daddy has!
The Little Lady jumped up and down excitedly with her hand up.
I winced. All my bad over-the-head jokes about having seen a million beavers in my lifetime were blatantly coming back to haunt me.
On our Easter holiday recently, we saw a sign advertising a Beaver Patrol. It wasn't starting up till this weekend and the Little Lady had made us promise that we would return to go on it.
And here we were, back up North freezing our arses off two weeks later on Beaver Patrol with a bunch of German tourists and Pinkie our chief Beaver Hunter.
Oh have you? That's wonderful! They are such amazing creatures!
Pinkie gushed happily at me.
Oh yes, they are amazing. I love a good Beaver.
I muttered self-consciously having never seen a single Beaver in my life unless you counted the vagina types.
When did you see a Beaver?
The Good Lady elbowed me and whispered quizzically as if I had just claimed to have seen Unicorns eating chicken wings from a car park bin.
Never you mind lass.
I smiled at Pinkie who was making an arse of unfolding a big map. One of the German men stepped forward to help her. I looked at his hugely thick fingers and shot a pitying glance at his wife.
So this is the route we are going to take around the loch. Can I ask you all to be as quiet as possible? We do not want to scare any baby Beavers!
She waved the map vaguely at us and motioned us to follow her.
Let's go see some Beavers!
She headed off into the brisk evening air and we set off, on Beaver Patrol.
I too have seen many Beavers.
As we neared the lochside, the thick-fingered German man fell into step beside me.
Very good.
I nodded approvingly at him.
We have many Beavers in Germany.
He had a faraway look in his eye like someone trying to shill Snipverse.
Don't google it, that way lies madness
Sounds good, might have to pay your place a visit.
I winked at him knowingly.
He nodded uncertainly as if I had suggested that Keanu Reeves had been replaced by his own waxwork dummy back in 2006.
Fortunately, he was saved from further beaverosity by Pinkie who had stopped near a half-chewed tree.
We can see they have been busy at work. Beavers are nature's engineers...
She waffled on for twenty minutes whilst we shuffled our feet in the increasing cold of the evening.
Daddy, where are the Beavers?
Asked the Little Boom as he kicked at a stone.
That's one of life's greatest questions young man.
I patted his shoulder and made a profound face, which was really just furrowing my brow as if I was struggling to hold in my very own watery Beaver.
Pinkie led us onto another tree which was a bit more chewed and blathered some shit about wetlands and dragonflies.
We all stamped our feet and huffed our misty breath into the increasingly freezing air.
Let's all scooch down and wait a moment, This is a great time for Beavers.
She waved us to quiet and scooch down.
We waited for some five minutes as the evening turned darker. Somewhere something shuffled in the undergrowth. It could have been anything. One of the Germans called out sharply.
Beaver!
We all looked in the direction he pointed.
The Beaver quacked loudly and swam away.
Pinkie stood up.
It doesn't look like we will see any tonight. Oh well, maybe next time. Let's head back.
She waggled her map in the direction of the base we had started out from and somewhat despondently, we all trudged after her.
Daddy, was that a Beaver or a Duck?
The Little Boom kept glancing back in the direction of the quacking that the German had pointed at.
I ruffled the young man's hair and raised my voice so the rest of the party could hear.
Well dude. If it looks like a duck and it quacks like a duck then it seems...
I caught the Beaver spotter's eye.
It's now a Beaver.
