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You are currently browsing the Environmental Novel: The Haymakers Survey - Our Secret Inheritance weblog archives for the day 31/12/2008.

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Archive for 31/12/2008

Runaway Beaver

A runaway beaver is on the loose in Devon, felling trees and leaving a trail of destruction covering 20 miles.  The beaver was one of three to escape last October from Upcott Grange Farm in Lifton.  Conservationist, Derek Gow, who keeps 24 beavers under licence from Natural England, is perplexed as to how they may have escaped since the perimeter fence of their managed enclosure was undamaged. 

 

 beaver.jpg

Two beavers were quickly caught but one has evaded capture and has been busy felling trees 20 miles away from the farm on the banks of the river Tamar.  The beaver is the only one of his kind at large in the wild in Britain; beavers became extinct in the UK after the 16th century after hunters trapped them for their fur.   Our interest is that Charles Lamb’s journal describes how Captain Richard Lewin returned from his travels in the New World with a fur hat made from beaver fur and wore it for his comic performance of ‘Yankee Doodle’ to admiring onlookers (page 253).  

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