Can You Eat Beaver on Fridays?

Catholic areas have trouble keeping restaurants going on Fridays in areas that are largely Catholic as fish on Friday was an ingrained habit (since loosened by the church) for a long time. I was looking for something completely different (as is often the case) and came across this: https://www.foodandwine.com/news/capyba ... oved-foods

amd also this article https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/th ... were-fish/

[Jenise]

I just sent this article to my brother who is V.P. of his HOA (what you call a 'strata' up there). They have a beaver problem in their wetlands. The Beev is cutting down trees they very much want to keep; they can have him professionally relocated but the bleeding heart types (which normally would include me and my brother, but not this time) are going "oh no you can't this is his home"!

I suggested he pass it around in case someone gets inspired.

In the words of June Cleaver, "Ward, go easy on the Beaver"?

In Chilean Patagonia, beavers (introduced about a century ago, give or take) have been destroying the native forests and causing flooding problems. There's a movement, supported by the government, to eradicate this invasive species.

Beavers are useful animals - the fur industry in Canada was a mainstay of the economy. Today you have to be a licensed trapper to harvest them, but apparently you can harvest up to 25% of the population ever year without putting a debt in them.

Sounds like Chile needs a fashion boom in fur coats!

As an aside, I am trying to think of any example of transplanted animal species being introduced into areas that are not part of their natural range that has worked out well. Just ask the Aussies how they feel about rabbits....they tried germ warfare on them in the 1950s by infecting them with a virus but they have bounced back so they now try other viruses.

Here is another example:

Eugene Schieffelin was such a fan of William Shakespeare that he decided to introduce a bird mentioned in his play Henry IV into the U.S. In 1890 and 1891, Schieffelin unleashed approximately 100 imported Europeans starlings into New York City’s Central Park.

Bad idea.

Within 50 years, they had spread across the continent. Today, there are more than 200 million European starlings in North America; considered noxious and destructive, they compete with native species and destroy crops such as grains and pitted fruits. They swarm agricultural feeding troughs, contaminating food and water, and are linked with diseases like histoplasmosis, a lung ailment afflicting agricultural workers.

Feral domestic cats are also a big problem in Australia. When the native Australians came to the continent some millennia back they brought their dogs with them. Those have since evolved into the dingo, but one wonders what havoc they wreaked when they first arrived.

Ah, yes, Schieffelin's starlings. IIRC his grand plan was to introduce all birds mentioned in Shakespeare to North America.

Another example from North America is the gypsy moth. Some idiot brought them to Boston in 1869, hoping to cross-breed them with silkworms and to establish a US silk industry. Specimens escaped and for most of the 20th century the gypsy moth caterpillars stripped trees bare of leaves each summer and caused widespread deforestation. In New England there was a big die-off of gypsy moths in the 1980s due to a fungal disease and the population has been more or less in control ever since. Other parts of Eastern North America have not been so lucky. A drought in New Hampshire some years back suppressed the fungus and we had a three-year bout of gypsy moth overpopulation. It ended when the drought broke and the fungus spread again. But two 50+ year old oak trees where I live were defoliated for three years running and died.

-Paul W.

Paul, that twit would have introduced all 60+ species mentioned in the plays (looked it up and as surprised that there were that many). This article I found says there are now 200,000,000 starlings in the US and they are a plague around airports.

https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-27055030

During the period that Europeans were busily colonising other parts of the globe, there was a lot of species introduction going on. In Australia and New Zealand, "Acclimatisation Societies" grew up, with the aim of making life in the colonies more pleasant through the introduction of familiar species from home. Hence, we have house sparrows in Australia, and New Zealand has a lot of chaffinches. Other introduced bird species include European starlings, goldfinches, blackbirds, thrushes, skylarks ... and more besides. In the four-footed line, rabbits, hares, foxes, and deer were released. Later on, domestic escapees such as cats joined the ranks of introduced species. And we have to mention the cane toad, which was brought into Australia as a biological control against beetles that were a pest in sugar cane crops; it soon became a pest in its own right.

Naturally, these introduced critters compete with native fauna, and have contributed to Australia's disgraceful track record for species extinction. I'd like to think that if the people doing the introducing knew then what we know now, they'd have made other choices. I'm not sure that they would have, though. Sentiment and arrogance seem to be an innate part of what makes us human.

And we have to mention the cane toad, which was brought into Australia as a biological control against beetles that were a pest in sugar cane crops; it soon became a pest in its own right.

Well, at least cane toads are poisonous. Should fit right in with Australia (the continent whose wildlife is out to kill you).

How does that song go?

She swallowed the dog to catch the cat.
She swallowed the cat to catch the bird.
She swallowed the bird to catch the spider
She swallowed the spider to catch the fly.
I don't know why she swallowed the fly.
Perhaps she'll die.

-Paul W.

That wriggled and jiggled and tickled inside her!

Some of our smarter birds have figured out how to eat cane toads without getting poisoned. Kites, ravens and ibises have learned to flip them over onto their backs, eat the soft undersides, and leave the back parts with the poison glands on.

I'd always heard it:

I know an old lady who swallowed a spider
that wriggled and jiggled and giggled inside her.
She swallowed the spider to catch the fly.
I don't know why she swallowed the fly, perhaps she'll die.

'Giggled' gives an additional rhyme.

And the last verse is:

I know an old lady who swallowed a horse.
She's dead, of course.

Alternatively, as the poem by Augustus De Morgan has it:

Great fleas have little fleas upon their backs to bite 'em,
And little fleas have lesser fleas, and so on ad infinitum.

-Paul W.

And there's more to that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siphonaptera_(poem)