(When I was a kid, the forest floor in my neck of the woods was full of big ragged holes like this one. When I asked the grups what made them, they said "mountain beaver".
I never saw the actual animal, and couldn't find mountain beaver in any book. My teachers – few of whom were of Old Settler stock – were no better help.
I concluded that "mountain beaver" was a cryptid, if not an outright jackalope, and wrote it off. But I still wondered what made those holes.
It would take the advent of Google to solve the mystery at last.
Aplodontia rufa – the mountain beaver – is an ancient proto-rodent, with multiple features missing from modern mammals. Last of its genus, the remaining Aplodontia have for the last 10,000 years been confined to the small stretch of the North Coast where I grew up. Hence the silence of the guidebooks, which never covered our stuff back in the day, and the ignorance of my teachers, who had been educated in the same imperialistic Eastern curriculum.
I've since laid eyes on a few of the little guys, which is ironic given that their habitat is vanishing fast and taking them with it. When I was surrounded by them, on ground long since scraped flat for housing estates, they never showed their faces.
I took the above shot last summer, on a cruise through another forest not far from my childhood home. It turned out to be rife with irregular holes scratched out under low vegetation, surrounded by heaps of glacial spoil. Just as I remember.
So I guess there are a few holdouts. Remains to be seen for how much longer. )
I never saw the actual animal, and couldn't find mountain beaver in any book. My teachers – few of whom were of Old Settler stock – were no better help.
I concluded that "mountain beaver" was a cryptid, if not an outright jackalope, and wrote it off. But I still wondered what made those holes.
It would take the advent of Google to solve the mystery at last.
Aplodontia rufa – the mountain beaver – is an ancient proto-rodent, with multiple features missing from modern mammals. Last of its genus, the remaining Aplodontia have for the last 10,000 years been confined to the small stretch of the North Coast where I grew up. Hence the silence of the guidebooks, which never covered our stuff back in the day, and the ignorance of my teachers, who had been educated in the same imperialistic Eastern curriculum.
I've since laid eyes on a few of the little guys, which is ironic given that their habitat is vanishing fast and taking them with it. When I was surrounded by them, on ground long since scraped flat for housing estates, they never showed their faces.
I took the above shot last summer, on a cruise through another forest not far from my childhood home. It turned out to be rife with irregular holes scratched out under low vegetation, surrounded by heaps of glacial spoil. Just as I remember.
So I guess there are a few holdouts. Remains to be seen for how much longer. )
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