Monday, May 21, 2012

Day 5: Was I Lied To?

Day 5 was a rest day. After day four's adventures, and knowing that I had five more days with this as a base camp, I decided to take a day off. I slept in (well, really I got up, lounged around, went back to bed, got up, lounged, and then napped). It was heavenly.

At some point I was out of my tent lounging around the campsite when a large (maybe racoon-sized)  rodent came up into my site and started nosing around. I stared at this animal trying to discern what on earth it could be. It had buck-teeth and liked to sit up on its hind legs. I wanted to believe it was a beaver, but it was all wrong.

The tail was my biggest concern. It was round and fluffy. Much more like a squirrel's tail than what I had been lead to believe a beaver's tail should look like. Had I just stumbled on another lie from my childhood? Did beavers actually have furry tails? Is there something about soaking wet tails on a beaver that make them appear flat? I thought of all the times I had seen beavers in the wild—it had always been on their dams, in the water. I couldn't remember actually seeing a single tail. Bewildered, I concluded this must be some species of beaver. Later, in chatting with a friend, we concluded it must have been a marmot. Having never seen a picture of one until we looked it up to decide if that was the case, you can see why I might have been confused.

Beaver
Marmot

Here are some pictures from Wikipedia to justify my point.

Go ahead and think I'm crazy. I was similarly convinced when I determined that this fluffy-tailed rodent must be some sort of beaver.

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