Beavers Are...What?

Every so often the print edition of The New York Times is well worth whatever discounted price I'm paying for home delivery. The newsstand price is $4.00, but no one in New York pays retail.

My wife continuously makes fun of me (and we're married over 50 years) for reading that "pinko Commie rag." She gets that opinion of the paper from her father growing up in the 50s and 60s who, like many adults of  that era, considered the paper to be connected to the Communist Party.

This stems from their notorious reporter, Walter Duranty, who in the 1930s filed glowing reports about life under Stalin. It became a big deal in journalism, and resulted in efforts to yank the Pulitzer that was awarded to Mr. Duranty. That never happened, however.

But enough about that, other than to establish that I've been reading the paper for many years, and don't care about my wife's opinion, or believe I'm reading propaganda from the Kremlin. If it's there, I dance around it.

Where else but in a Saturday edition can one read about Canadian beavers? And not just tucked away deep inside. Page 1. Saturdays are slow news days, especially during the summer when the movers and shakers have either not reported in on Friday, or have left early for the weekend.

I've noticed this Saturday trend for many years. Mondays, too. You can usually count on a story that is of human interest, or in this case, of animal interest.

You might expect a story about beavers to actually carry a picture of one. No. There is some sort of Page 1 aerial view of what is described as beaver built dams blocking water flow, and inside pictures of scientists who are tracking the little fellas with what else, drones. But no picture of a beaver. Were that they hard to find? The aerial shot looks like a very bad case of foot fungus.

And here is one for a future Jeopardy clue. What are people called who study beavers? Castorologists. Turn it into a typo, and you've got the study of a deceased Cuban dictator.

When I was a lad in short pants in the 1950s, there was a toothpaste called ipana. The commercials were cartoonish, led by "Bucky Beaver", whose prominent two front teeth glowed after brushing with ipana. The jingle went: "brusha, brusha, brusha, with the new ipana."

It's only now I'm wondering, how did they come up with the name ipana? Was it an acronym? According to my new-found buddy, ChatGPT, there is no evidence that ipana was an acronym. Bristol-Myers had been making ipana since 1901. There is no one alive now who can tell us anything about the origin of the name.

(Unrelated, I once knew there was a maître d' at New York Racing Association, NYRA tracks, Manny Pana, who ran the dining rooms and who was always willing to accept a $20 gratuity for a good table on the glass near the finish line. The NYRA execs hated him because he was making more than them. Eventually, Manny was replaced by an uncorruptible staff trained in Walt Disney hospitality.)

ipana. Madison Avenue at its best. So who wouldn't want teeth as bright as a beaver's? This, despite the fact that beavers have reddish/yellow front teeth due to a high iron content beneath the enamel. Like steel-toe  reinforced work shoes, a beaver's teeth are reinforced. Perfect for gnawing those tree trunks and making dams.

It wouldn't do ipana toothpaste sales any good if Bristol-Meyers admitted Bucky Beaver was a rodent. Bad publicity. Couldn't show iron stained, plaque teeth as what the toothpaste was good at removing. Today that would be called "bad optics."

ChatGPT:

No—not literally. Beavers do not have metal teeth, but their front teeth are extraordinarily well adapted for gnawing wood.

Their incisors contain a high concentration of iron compounds in the outer enamel, which gives the teeth their characteristic orange-red color and makes the enamel exceptionally hard and wear-resistant. The softer dentin behind the enamel wears away faster, keeping the incisors self-sharpening.

So, in a sense, beavers have iron-reinforced teeth, not metal teeth. 🦫

And their incisors never stop growing, which is why they need to keep gnawing.

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And its those damn dam builders that have the good folks in Umiujaq, Quebec, a seaside community 700 miles south of the Arctic Circle, hard by Hudson Bay, scratching their heads. The Arctic char, a fish that is a staple of the Inuit's diet, cannot leap over the beaver dams like a salmon can. Therefore, the char do not reach this tiny enclave, and the residents are experiencing "food insecurity." Yes, even Inuits can have "food insecurity."

Despite the size of a char being nothing close to being a tadpole, it is not a pole vaulter. And those damn damming busy beavers have built dams as big as school buses that prevent the fish of getting to where the Inuits can fish for it. 

Of course, Global Warming is behind the trend of the beavers seeking colder waters and swimming further north than they used to. Up to now, there is nothing that I found remarkable about the story. However, there on Page 1, leading off the 6th paragraph are the words I never expected to read: "The Furry Pyriform rodents..." A showstopper sentence.

Capybara

What? A beaver is a rodent? You mean like a rat or a mouse? Apparently so. The genus of the beaver puts then in the rodent family, and they are second in size to the largest rodent, the capybara, that resembles the beaver. Nice to know. 

Beaver pelts were once all the rage to make coats out of. John Jacob Astor made a fortune providing beaver pelts to the swells of the late 18th and early 19th-centuries in the Gilded Age.

I wonder how popular the pelts and fur pieces might have been if it were widely known that the beaver was a rodent. "That's a nice rodent you've got on today."

When the Interborough Rapid Transit (IRT) subway system was burrowing under 4th Avenue in Manhattan (Yes Virginia, there still is a 4th Avenue, below 14th Street.) into what is now the 4, 5, and 6 lines and it passed through Astor Place, there were mosaic designs placed along the station's wall to identify to the immigrant population that perhaps couldn't yet read, that they were going through Astor Place because of the beavers portrayed on the walls. Astor equaled beavers. Simple. If you know, you know.

The mosaics are still there, as are the ones showing a locomotive for the 42nd Street Grand Central stop. There are others along the line. Subway lore.

I'd be remiss if I didn't include two stories about beavers from the 50s. The first is the obvious one: the 'Leave It to Beaver' 1950s TV-family of dad Walt; pearl-wearing mom, June; oldest son Wally with a varsity high school sweater, and of course the younger brother who the show is named after, Beaver.

All lessons in life come from this family. Dad is a briefcase toting office worker; Mom runs the house. Wally is always trying to explain things to Beaver, and Beaver is sometimes confused, but he's cute.

Beaver's birth name is Theodore, but when he was born, Wally was but a tyke himself, and he couldn't pronounce 'Theodore.' It came out 'Beaver.' Well, that's what they say.

The next beaver association is when I was in the back seat with Billy Gabler, in a car driven by his father, with my dad in the front passenger seat. (We didn't have a car.) For some reason, the game was to see who could be the first to see and call out on seeing a station wagon on the road and yell "beaver." I swear. I don't remember keeping score, which was almost as unusual as calling out "beaver."

We weren't the only car-trip tykes passing the time this way. This was a recognized game known to others. It is now after writing this that I'm wondering how did the word 'beaver' come to be associated with a station wagon sighting?

Say what you will about AI, but ChatGPT offers a cogent explanation: station wagons of the 50s were often 'Woodies.' wood paneled cars. Since a beaver chomps wood, seeing a station wagon required acknowledging it with a yell of "beaver."  We were not selective. Any station wagon counted as a beaver sighting to us. Our rules.

So, at 77, with the help of AI, there's a possible explanation for why "beaver" got called out when seeing a station wagon. I'd love to share this with Billy Gabler, but I can't find him.

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