Dateline Canada, where today’s most industrious landscape architects are the world’s busiest beavers. Having been an Oregon Duck fan all my life, I really don’t buy much stock in them buck-toothed beavers, though I do have a soft spot in my heart for the beavers of Canada.
By building cozy watery homes for themselves and their families, Canadian beavers are also unintentionally washing out roads and flooding farmer’s fields, those little bucked-toothed beavers.
Beavers were never a problem in Canada, at least not during that long, fashionable period where beaver felt-top hats were in vogue. Beavers were mighty scarce during that fashionable period in time, and they stayed pretty much submerged beneath the surface of the water during that period, only coming up for a breath every now and again when the coast was clear.
But once the beaver felt-top hat fell out of favor, well, here they came again, mating right out in the open on dry land, and didn’t they populate the country. Ontario became the great beaver mating ground.
And what’s the first thing a newborn beaver wants to do? Drink milk? No. Mother beavers do not feed their buck-toothed little beaver babies milk. One beaver mother tried that once and regretted it. No the first thing a beaver mother gives to her newborn beaver baby is a nice long stick of red spruce to chew on.
Problems start to arise when that baby beaver gets to be a teenager, and has not been taught the difference between a stick of red spruce and a picket fence, or a fiber optic cable, or maybe a wooden leg that has been carelessly set aside.
When beaver dams break, beavers don’t care, they enjoy the ride, but unsuspecting folks downstream get aggravated when the beavers float blissfully by and wave to them with their tiny little paws.
But enough about Ontario, what’s happening in the great state of Florida? Nothing, just like last week. So that’s why Florida resident, Tyler Phillips grabbed his pogo stick and caught a flight to London, where he would attempt to set a world record by bouncing over five London taxi cabs. I kid you not.
It wasn’t all that long ago that Mrs. Phillips was bouncing young Tyler on her knee, and count them, boing, boing, boing, boing, boing, her son now has a new world record for bouncing on a pogo stick. Do not try to beat this record at home, unless you own five convertible mini-cars, and your next door neighbor is a bone surgeon. Personally, I shall hoist a cold one on high at five bells today to Tyler, and his new world record.
Finally, in Queensland, a motorcycle cop pulled over a possum who looked to be drunk, only to follow that possum to a sick magpie. The magpie was saved, and survived, while that drunk possum got a free ride home on that Queensland officer’s motorcycle. All’s well that ends well.
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— For more than 30 years, in over 4,000 performances, columnist and Chautauquan McAvoy Layne has been dedicated to preserving the wit and wisdom of “The Wild Humorist of the Pacific Slope,” Mark Twain. As Layne puts it: “It’s like being a Monday through Friday preacher, whose sermon, though not reverently pious, is fervently American.”