February 23, 2007
This is cool
NEW YORK (AP) - Beavers grace New York City's official seal. But the industrious rodents haven't been spotted here for as many as 200 years _ until this week.Biologists videotaped a beaver swimming up the Bronx River on Wednesday. Its twig-and-mud lodge had been spotted earlier on the river bank, but the tape confirmed the presence of the animal.
"It had to happen because beaver populations are expanding, and their habitats are shrinking," said Dietland Muller-Schwarze, a beaver expert at the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry in Syracuse. "We're probably going to see more of them."
Beavers gnawed out a prominent place in the city's early days as a European settlement, attracting fur traders to a nascent Manhattan. The animal appears in the city seal to symbolize a Dutch trading company that factored in the city's colonial beginnings, according to the city's Web site.
But amid heavy trapping, beavers disappeared from the city in the early 1800s, according to the city Department of Parks & Recreation.
That's got to be one tough beaver.
Yips! from Robbo:
Heh heh heh. You typed "beaver."
Posted by: The Maximum Leader at February 23, 2007 03:13 PMNo wonder NY is so competitive & angry all the time. Gotta channel that "fur trapping" energy somewhere, if you haven't seen beavers in 200 years.
Posted by: rbj at February 23, 2007 03:59 PMOh, and here I thought it was about the return of pron to Times Square.
Posted by: GroovyVic at February 23, 2007 07:15 PMOK, even for your delusional rantings, this is just wrong.
Posted by: Zendo Deb at February 23, 2007 07:41 PM
Image courtesy of the lovely and talented 