Leila Philip’s book earns a fine review on NPR and beaver benefits are well extolled. Of course there is the usual discussion of beavers being “weird rodents” which continues to jar me every time and makes me bristle to the ends of my tail. What’s weird looking about beavers? I demand as I suddenly turn into a 7 year old boy on the playground. I’ll tell you what’s weird, OTTERS! They’re all slinky like they hardly have any bones or anything. That’s weird,

Beavers aren’t weird. Hrmph.

In ‘Beaverland,’ Leila Philip credits the beaver with building America

Journalist Leila Philip first became interested in beavers when she saw a group of rodents building a pond near her house. Her fascination with what they were doing led her to research and report her new book, Beaverland, which takes a closer look at the animals’ impact on North America, from the earliest transatlantic beaver fur trade to today’s river restoration efforts. Philip spoke with NPR’s Michel Martin about how learning their long history on our continent can highlight beavers’ ongoing economic and environmental contributions, especially when it comes to water conservation.

But maybe I should stop attacking the word weird and actually start thinking about its origins. Did you know that weird comes from the old english word WYRD which literally means fate. The three weird/wierd sisters controlled the fates of human life When you were born, how long you lived, when and how you died,. The first spun out the thread of life, the second wove it with other lives, and the merciless third cut it at the end. From the old german wert which litterally meant to turn or to wind.

Clotho, the youngest of the sisters, presided over the moment in which we are born, and held a distaff in her hand; Lachesis spun out all the events and actions of our life; and Atropos, the eldest of the three, cut the thread of human life with a pair of scissors.

Weird meant “uncanny” and “supernatural”. In the 1400’s calling something weird literally meant

“having the ability to control fate“.

which if you think about it, makes it pretty entirely appropriate for any animal that can turn a pond into a wetland and make a desert spring into an oasis and change an urban trickle into a vibrant ecosystem.