Batesville Mississipi’s crack investigative police team had one onery mystery on its hands. Oh sure, they’d untangled their share of inexplicable crimes. But this was worse. Something  about the terrible finality of those missing trees made it worse.  Worse than that time that cookie was missing from Ma Topper’s jar. Worse than the time that kidnapper ran off with the baby Jesus from the manger display.

Who in the hell was chopping the trees on court street?

I won’t comment on the collective IQ of an entire police force that couldn’t hazard a guess what was removing trees a mile from the river. I won’t speculate that the entire state has such an abysmal record on beavers that they wouldn’t know how to wrap a tree if their lives depended on it. I won’t even say that wedged as they are between Alabama and Arkansas there must be a regional shortage of problem solving skills to go around. But thank goodness they had the presence of mind to bring in the trapper.

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Meanwhile in Massachusetts…

Don’t leave it to the beavers

Mike Callahan of Beaver Solutions, a company based out of Southampton, Massachusetts, spoke to Boxford’s BTA/BOLT on May 1 to offer suggestions for outsmarting those pesky rodents who spend their days building dams and lodges throughout the woodlands of the North Shore.

The flooded or dried up areas that result can be managed by clever humans without trapping and killing the beavers, says Callahan who proposes such solutions as pond leveler pipes for dams and special keystone fences for culverts.

Nice! Educating the masses! Now just guess who gave Mike that skull lo these many years ago as a thank you for endless advice when a certain city was set on killing some beavers.

Go ahead, I’ll wait.