Do you know this delightful book? A series of increasingly bossy animals appear in this hardy child’s life and she works pluckily to remove them one after the other.

What do you do with a kangaroo

who hops through your window and

jumps on you bed and says,

“I never sleep on wrinkled sheets,

so change them now and make them smooth,

and fluff up the pillows if you please?

The heroine isn’t at all discouraged.

You throw him out that’s what you do!

“Get away from my bed, you Kangaroo”.

This fairly amusing encounter is followed by a series of other increasingly unrealistic demands – an opossum hanging on her towel rack who requires a new toothbrush, a llama who wants her pants tailored, and finally a menacing bengal tiger who sits on her bicycle and orders she push him all the way to the circus before being eaten. She blithely dispatches every single one of these unreasonable requests with a no non-sense pragmatism and goes about her business doing what she always does.

Give that tiger a push, if that’s what he wants. You push him right off, and that’s all there is to it.

Until bedtime.

What do you do if it’s late at night but all snuggled up

where you always sleep is a Camel, a Moose, a Llama, an

Opossum, a Tiger, a Raccoon and a Kangaroo?

“We’re very sorry if you want to sleep but as you can see

there is no more room. So make some warm milk and bring

us a glass and find some more blankets- it’s chilly in here and

remember the chocolate chip cookies.”

Of course the heroine continues to solve the problems as she always did, which is try to haul the intruding animals away and get her own bed back – to claim her territory and return to her normal routine. She tries like the Martinez City Council tried and like New Jersey tried, and like Kings Beach tried and like Latvia tried to get rid of the unwelcome animals, stop the disruption, prevent further damage and return things back to normal. There are a series of adorable illustrations by Mercer Mayer showing again and again how gallantly she persists in an effort that is rapidly becoming futile.

But in the end, it’s late, she needs to sleep, the odds are clearly against her, and she suddenly realizes the rules that she once played by have changed.

What do you do if you can’t throw them out?

You let them stay.

Cue adorable illustration of plucky little girl snuggled comfortably with a camel, a tiger, a kangaroo, a moose, a raccoon and an opossum. Aww. This story is offered by way of an introduction to the remarkable update from Latvia that was sent by our famed foreign correspondent, Alex Hiller. Remember beavers had taken over the canals and the city council decided to have a contest to see who could best [fail] to solve the problem and decide what to do with them? Alex traveled to the region and had lunch with the environmental minister to talk about wire wrapping trees and flow devices.

Yesterday he sent this:

In case you can’t make out the translated headline, it reads

“ENCOUNTER BEAVERS IN RIGA!!!”

The city council received a wide range of proposals – hunting them, scaring away with vuvuzela sounds, setting up 24h patrols, or even domesticating them. Finally the officials decided to put fencing around the trees and to feed the animals.