Beavers

02/28/2005

The morning brings hill fog; some snow lies lower on the slopes and the wind blows lightly up the glen, but veers north west by evening. It is mostly dry, but we do get the lightest of showers from time to time, pressure remains high, with plus 4/5 degrees temperature. The office is busy with Monday phone calls. We must be mastering this as we receive replies to most of our enquiries, and the bin men call, the first time for two weeks. However, I manage to make THE most enormous gaff. I am phoned in the early hours to make some comment on Radio Scotland about the planned reintroduction of Beavers by Scottish Natural Heritage in Knapdale. I am against this plan for two reasons. Firstly, there is no conclusive evidence that Beavers were ever present in Scotland four hundred years ago (certainly no records on the Great Book of Trollaigh). Secondly, the record of introduced mammals into almost any environment has proved disastrous. A simple example might be the need for the self same Scottish Natural Heritage to spent a couple of million over two years to cull all hedgehogs from the Hebrides. I was in a bit of a rush and linked Radio Scotland into a few websites with information about Beavers. I gave the sites only the briefest review; some of the names were a little odd, one claiming to be “Unlimited Snatch”. Imagine my distress on air when it became known that these sites referred to a very different “Beaver”. As I innocently started to talk on the subject of radio tagging of Beavers, the BBC switchboards positively lit up. When I finished the telephoned radio interview, my eldest daughter was hooting, Mhairi red faced and that waster Lachie smirking. Amongst the supercilious phone calls from several longstanding chums, came one from the second wasting asset in Highbury expressing her surprise at my familiarity with “Tasies”. I stroll in a nonchalant manner to the boot room door and kick my wellies as far into the garden as I can, oh bollocks! Yours Aye, Archie, The Baron Trollaigh.