Bad Beaver Publishing

Word of Mouth
May 10, 2012
How To Eat A Beaver
By Virginia Prescott
Carol Leonard is considered one of the forerunners – or foremothers – of the modern midwifery movement. She was the first midwife certified to practice legally in New Hamsphire back in 1982, and has since delivered more than 1,200 babies safely in their homes. That story is covered in her memoir, “Lady’s Hands, Lion’s Heart: A Midwife’s Saga.”
Today, we’re focusing on a collection of essays on some of the other facets of Carol’s life…like aspiring tree farmer, would-be trapper, and owner, with her husband of Bad Beaver Farm in Ellsworth, Maine. The collection is called Bad Beaver Tales.

http://www.nhpr.org/post/how-eat-beaver

I was driving down Dimond Hill at dusk to go to the evening shift at the health center when I saw a dark colored mink lying in the middle of the road. He must have been trying to get to Ash Brook when he was hit. I slammed on my brakes and pulled over and made all the on-coming cars go around me as I stood over the still body, protecting it from getting further injured. It looked like the animal’s spirit was still in its body, so I gently nudged it with the toe of my boot to avoid a nasty bite, if he was still capable. No response.

I leaned over and palpated a very faint heartbeat. He was still warm but his eyes were getting dim. His life force was leaving him. I scooped him up to get him out of traffic and put him in the back hatch of my Jeep. I sat stroking his silky fur. His body was perfect, no sign of trauma. He was a buck male with beautiful mahogany colored fur and a little “soul patch” of white fur under his chin. I had no idea what I was going to do with him but I had to get to work.

The next morning I called a man whom I had met from the NH Trapper’s Association to ask who could help me preserve this mink. He said none of the NH trappers skinned their own animals any more; they all brought them to a man in Weare for processing. I was astounded. All these macho trappers just caught their animals—but didn’t clean them? What the hell? He said the man who did the skinning for all of New England was a guy named Harris Ilsley. He explained to me where he lived because, apparently, Mr. Ilsley didn’t believe in using the telephone.

I drove around Weare until I knew I was at the right address. The yard was littered with rusted out trucks in varying degrees of dilapidation. There were numerous wooden buildings in sad states of disrepair with blown out windows and blue tarps over leaking roofs. There were muddy ruts in the leftover snow leading to different shacks. But in all this squalor, rather surprisingly, there were several bird feeders and hives of honeybees, the remnants of a green house and the skeleton of last summer’s vegetable garden.

I parked in the ruts next to what I thought was probably the main house where someone could maybe survive the winter. I walked over rotting porch floor boards up to the door that was leaning on its hinges. I knocked on the door until I noticed it was closed with a screw driver—from the outside—so Mr. Ilsley obviously was not within.

I walked up the lane to an outbuilding and stuck my head inside, calling, “Hullo? Anybody here?” That’s when I noticed all the freezers—and the blood on the floor. I was getting pretty sketched out at this point. I had no idea what Mr. Ilsley would be like—or if he’d be delighted to see me. Just then I remembered that I hadn’t told Tom what I was doing. I called him on his cell phone. I left a voice-mail telling him that if I wasn’t home for dinner it was because I was in a freezer in Weare.

I could feel someone watching me but there wasn’t a sound. I got back in my car and sat for a few minutes. I really did need to do something with this poor mink. I drove out of the yard and across the road to a gas station/convenience store. I asked the guys there if they knew if Mr. Ilsley was home. They shook their heads. They said they hadn’t seen him in over a decade. They also said that if Mr. Ilsley didn’t know me, he wouldn’t come out.

Damn it. I drove back in the yard and got out of my car. I was standing in the sun and now I could really feel someone watching me. I looked around at all the wooden structures until I saw a slight movement. I couldn’t believe my eyes. Standing next to an apple tree was a little Leprechaun. A little man with a pork pie hat who was smoking a curved pipe. He was peering at me intently.

“Mr. Ilsley?” I walked through the snow toward him. He didn’t move. He just kept puffing on his pipe.

I stuck out my hand. “I got your name from the NH Trappers because I have a mink that needs to be skinned.”

His eyes grew wide and he broke into a grin—his teeth looked like a NASCAR checkered flag.

“Oh jesus, deah. I thought you were one of them anti’s.”

He gestured for me to follow him inside a big unpainted building. At this point I was wondering…anti? Anti what? …Anti-choice? Anti-women’s reproductive rights? Where am I right now? Oh…anti-TRAPPING! I get it now, another beleaguered and misunderstood, marginalized group.

When I crossed the threshold into the building, I stood shock still. I felt as though I had crossed over into the early 18th century. When my eyes adjusted to the dimmer light, I realized I was standing in a big barn-like workroom that had hundreds and hundreds of fur pelts hanging from hooks from the roof rafters. Coyotes and fox and raccoons. Row upon row of beautiful lush fur pelts.

Along the far wall were stacks of skinned beavers, pink and white carcasses. I only knew they were beavers because of the big flat black tails that were still attached to the bodies, about fifty tails hanging down in the pile. Along side of the beavers were skinned coyote carcasses with their teeth leering menacingly. In front of us were huge round wooden pallets for stretching beaver and otter pelts. The beavers that were already dried were stacked in row after row of round pelts that had been removed from the wooden spheres. At our feet were many more animals—still intact—waiting for Mr. Ilsley. There must have been over a thousand dead animals in this place.

As my eyes became focused in the gloom, I absorbed more of the 18th century I was standing in. There were crates full of discarded entrails and congealed blood inches thick on the floor. Decades of blood. Mr. Ilsley walked over to a small table that had two soda fountain stools in front of it and sat down and re-lit his pipe. He puffed a few times, still eyeing me warily. I’m sure he thought I was from PETA and I was going to scream and douse him with fake blood at any minute.

He asked, “You a midwife?”

“How’d you know that?”

He nodded toward the door, “Your car’s tags.”

“Oh, right!” I grinned. “Yes, actually, you might know the old country doctor who trained me, Doctor Francis Brown from Henniker. He was the one who taught me my trade thirty-seven years ago.” I thought maybe Mr. Ilsley would know Francis as Henniker was the next town over from Weare.

Harris let out a huge belly laugh and slapped his knee. “Doc Brown! He was my mother’s doctor!” He wiped his eyes. “Ain’t thet sumpthin!”

I was in like Flynn.

Now Harris became very animated and talkative. “I remember one time my mother cut her leg and she was bleeding pretty good. Doc Brown made a house call and patched up her leg.” He took a long puff and then continued with his story. “Doc Brown told her if she ever cut her leg again to do this, and then Doc Brown laid on the floor and stuck his leg straight up in the air. Can you imagine a doctor today lying on the floor?!?” Harris was practically yelling at this point he was so excited.

I looked around at the present bloody floor. “Nope, I can’t say I can think of a single doctor who would lie on the floor as a demonstration.”

After this, Harris pretty much didn’t stop talking the entire time I was hanging out with him. He agreed to skin my little boy mink for the hefty fee of $2.00. I sat next to him at the little table as he began skinning my mink. He started at the back foot and cut up toward the tail. He talked the whole time. As he deftly worked with a surprisingly small knife, he told me that he was born in 1930 and grew up on this farm in Weare and had pretty much stayed close to home his whole life. When he was five years old, he had his own laying hens and sold his eggs on the side of the road. Then he started selling worms for bait for fishermen. He raised pigeons to sell the meat as squab.

Harris struggled a bit getting the tail skinned but he finally got it freed and I have a great photo I took of him at that moment with a huge, triumphant smile. He continued his saga. He left school in the eighth grade saying school for him was “poison.” He started fishing and trapping along the local rivers. He learned to skin and care for the pelts very early on.

Next we moved over to a hook that was hanging from a rafter where he slowly pulled my mink inside out. I sat on a little Leprechaun stool next to him. As he worked slicing the fascia and separating skin from muscle, he told me he did a fair amount of “hellin” around in his youth but he never married. He worked hard and supported himself by gathering apple drops all over Weare and pressed them into cider. He kept hives of honeybees and also hunted wild bees for honey. He grew potatoes, collected sap for maple syrup and sold cords of firewood.

Harris put my mink on a ski-shaped drying board with a belly board to prevent the mink from sticking. He sat in front of the board where he “split the tail.” He made sure I watched his technique. He said he skins more animals in a year than most trappers will do in a lifetime. He skins whatever comes in the door. Generally, Harris skins about 3,000 animals a year and about 2,000 of those are beavers.

As the last step he skillfully “pleated” the tail with a dozen push pins. He said most skinners don’t bother to do this but he believes this enhances the grade and gives the pelt a more luxurious “viewing area” as he called the finished product of the fur. Somehow our conversation wandered to Benson’s Wild Animal Farm where we both had nostalgic memories of visiting as children. Harris told me he always had to ride with his teacher when they did the annual field trip to Benson’s as he was famous for getting car sick. He said it was an undisputed fact that if he took the bus, they would have to pull over to the side of the road several times so young Harris could yack.

As I was leaving, Harris said he wanted to show me something. Way in the back recess of the skinning building were dozens of large cardboard boxes. Each box had several exquisitely hand carved songbirds created by Harris. Each bird was lovingly carved and painted to be almost lifelike. I was astounded by their beauty. My favorite was a mother robin with a worm in her mouth feeding the four wide-open, outstretched mouths of her hungry little nestlings.

“How long before my mink is ready to go home?” I asked.

“Oh, it’ll only be about a week, deah.”

I smiled. Good. I get to see Harris again in only seven days.

My new friend, Skinner Harris

I have never eaten a beaver. Well, that’s not entirely true but let’s just say I have never eaten the largest rodent in North America…Castor canadensis (which sounds like a vaginal infection to me). Anyway, we have many beavers on our farm in Maine that are flooding our fields and they have become a true nuisance, hence the farm’s name, Bad Beaver Farm. I decided I would like to trap these beavers and eat them.

Since my decision to be a beaver eater, I have received a fair amount of criticism. One (former) Facebook friend even called me “Satanic” for wanting to eat these adorable, smart rodents. Here’s my reasoning: I don’t want to eat meat from the supermarkets anymore. The genetically modified “chickens” are a scientific horror story. These “birds” are featherless and, by 12 weeks of age, their breasts are so heavy that they can’t walk and they have to crawl to their food. Big fat globs of featherless, wingless poultry meat crawling on the floor for food. Horrifying. And now, with the expose’ of the “pink slime” engineered meat in all the news, this just reinforces my determination to try to provide as much protein by our own means as possible.

I told my self-righteous, judgmental Facebook critics that unless they were total vegans and didn’t support the US meat industry and if they didn’t wear leather shoes, belts or man-purses—to back off and never give me shit about this.

A week after I brought my little mink to be skinned, I went back to my new friend, Harris, to pick it up. I walked into Harris’s big workspace and there he was sitting on a little stool almost lost amidst all the hanging coyote and fox pelts. He was working on a beaver that was hanging from a large hook from the ceiling. He was busy with his knife skillfully removing the pelt from the carcass. He still had on his little pork-pie hat and the pipe was firmly clamped in his mouth.

I said, “Hi, Harris! Did you miss me?”

He looked up from his dangling carcass and gave me a huge checkered grin. I think he was truly glad to see me.

He said, “Well! If it isn’t the Hippie Girl!”

Harris is a little, wiry old guy and he was wearing an old grimy insulated long-underwear top underneath a brand new-looking turquoise Izod Lacoste sport shirt. Spotless. And it was about three sizes too big. This cracked me up.

“You’re looking good today, Harris.”

There was a little low wooden stool right next to the one he was sitting on. It looked like a little kid’s stool. I sat down next to him to watch him deftly cutting the fascia between muscle and skin.

He said, “Be careful. I think there’s blood on that stool.”

I said, “Harris, I think I’ve been sitting on bloody stools of one sort or another for over thirty-five years now.”

He laughed out loud at that. “Oh, that’s right. I forgot that blood wouldn’t really bother you.”

He told me that this was the peak of the beaver trapping season as it ended on April 10th. He said the trappers were bringing in between 30 and 40 beavers a day for him to skin. He charged $4.00 an animal. There were about 20 beavers lying on their backs on the floor. I asked him if the beaver he was working on was fresh. He said it had come in from Francistown the day before. I asked him if I could have it to eat. He grinned at me.

“Sho-ah!” He almost shouted he was so pleased. “I’ll just clean out the innards for you.”

Harris didn’t usually eviscerate the animals. He stretched the pelts on big wooden rounds and left the intact furless carcasses to pile up until they became a nuisance. Then he dragged them out to the top of a hill in back of his property for the coyotes and other scavengers to feast on. I was trying not to imagine what this place must smell like in the heat of summer. He said that every once in a while, the Health Department paid him a visit. I said, “I bet they do.”

My beaver was a medium size female, probably about forty pounds. Harris quickly pulled out all the glistening blue and white entrails. I couldn’t believe how huge they looked to me. The innards looked much bigger than a deer’s. He asked me if I wanted the liver and I said, “Sure.” The liver looked about the size of a dark crimson football. Harris removed the head and the tail and handed me the body. I put her in a new white garbage bag. The body was about three feet long and weighed a lot.

I was sitting on the tiny wooden stool next to Harris. I had the body-bagged beaver resting in my lap. He turned to me and said very gently, “I started reading your book the other night. It seems like you had some real pain in your younger years, that you’re no stranger to sorrow.”

My eyes welled up with tears at his empathy. “Yeah, I had a pretty rough go of it for a while there.” I sighed. Then the irony of me being consoled by a bloody little Leprechaun who was sitting in front of a dangling, naked beaver made me smile. “But I’m good now Harris, honest, my life is good.”

He nodded and puffed on his pipe. We continued chatting. I think we wandered into a discussion about the widespread use of anti-depressants which he disdained. Our pleasant exchange was interrupted when a trapper came in to hire Harris’s services. I said goodbye to my talkative friend and pecked him on the cheek. I picked up my girl beaver and walked past the trapper to go out the door.

The trapper’s mouth was dropped open. “Jesus, what the hell was that?”

What I have since found out is, although many trappers claim that beaver meat is delicious—no one I spoke with had actually cooked one. Even the acclaimed wild game chef who wrote the cookbook Cook Wild New Hampshire for the Fish & Game Department had never actually butchered a beaver. I soon realized I was on my own.

So I did the most common-sense thing to do. I called my friend Kendall.

Kendall and I have a long history of foraging for wild food together—mushroom hunting, fishing, the occasional (still warm) road killed wild turkeys. I knew this would be perfectly understandable to her. I was right. Kendall brought over a half gallon of white wine and we dug right in.

Harris had already removed the castor glands from this beaver. He sells them for their scent. He cautioned me to remove the fat near the hind legs as there were two more, smaller scent glands in that fat that could taint the meat. Kendall and I set up a cleaning station outside in the driveway and began what turned out to be a fascinating anatomy lesson. We each had a skinning knife and we carefully explored our beaver to find the meat that was acceptable. We got in a rhythm of Kendall removing fat and me feeling for the fine textured red meat.

Here’s what we got: I got two long back-straps from both sides of the back bone which were wider at the shoulders and tapered to a point near the tail. Kendall wrestled a large amount of meat from the hams of both hind legs, these large muscles attesting to the powerful back legs and tail of our beaver. I found two tenderloins inside the body cavity in about the middle of the beaver and to either side of the back bone. The meat wasn’t pretty. It was obviously a hack job, but if the end, we had about five pounds of strips of fresh NH beaver.

I get such a kick out of Kendall. She’s the product of New England girl’s boarding schools—which she rejected heartily in the 1960s. Now we were sitting together, hunched over our first beaver, our fingers exploring. I grinned to see her sip from her glass of Chardonnay—with rivers of beaver blood trailing down her arm to her elbow. That’s true friendship right there, by god.

We were just finishing up when a young couple showed up for a visit. The young husband was looking for Tom, who had very conveniently left on a motorcycle outing with his brother, leaving Kendall and me on our own to do the dirty work. The couple looked very skeeged out and I realized this must be one of the most redneck things they had ever laid eyes on. We invited them to dinner but they politely declined.

I decided I wanted to cook the beaver without much additional seasonings as I wanted to get a real idea of what the unadorned meat tasted like. No marinating. I floured the beaver meat by putting a couple of cups of flour in a large Ziploc bag and added the meat and shook it. Then we simply cooked it in heated olive oil in a large skillet and stood around drinking wine as we watched it cook. It hadn’t cooked for very long before I thought it looked done and I had to try it.

I put the first morsel in my mouth. I could not believe the sensation in my mouth. It was more of an “experience” than a taste. SWEET BEAVER! It was absolutely incredible. It tasted fresh like spring and clean fresh water, a little minty like alders and poplar trees—not gamey at all. I was tasting the habitat of my wild beaver. It was delicious and tender and mild all at once. Actually, it didn’t taste like “meat”, certainly not the mealy crap they’re selling in the grocery stores.

Beavers are vegetarians, existing mostly on deciduous trees. In the right environment, they are living in fresh water away from pollutants and chemicals. The only way I could explain what it tastes like; when people asked if it was like chicken or pork, I’d say compare it to the difference between a store bought tomato and one straight from your garden. There is no way to compare the “experience” of the two tastes.

I bet that when the fur-traders came to North America and started trapping beavers for their pelts, they just threw the meat away, just like what happened to the buffalos. Buffalo hides were prized but the carcasses of the animals were left in huge mountains to rot. Wasted carnage. People assumed that the meat was inedible. Even today, beaver pelts are prized and are big sellers in China, but the meat is discarded. The Native Americans considered beaver to be a delicacy. Now I know they were right.

A little later after our test-tasting, Tom and his brother, Lee, returned from their motorcycle ride.

I asked his brother, “Hey, Lee, do you want to taste my beaver?”

He said, “Nope. No thanks. Nah, I’m good.”

SAVE A TREE … EAT A BEAVER!

~ Carol Leonard from Bad Beaver Tales, Volume II, Sumbitchin Barn, 2013

I woke in a cold sweat because I heard Phaedra screaming downstairs. I threw off the covers and jumped out of bed and started running to the stairs.

Tom asked, “What?”

“Phaedra’s having a seizure!”

Tom was right behind me running down the stairs.

Our thirteen year old mixed black Lab was on her dog bed in the family room in a full blown seizure. She’d had a couple of episodes a month ago; our vet assumed she had a brain tumor that was causing swelling. He put her on Phenobarbital to suppress seizure activity and that had worked…until now. It’s unbelievably horrific to watch our dog in the throws of this struggle. Frantic paddling with her legs and snapping at the air, screaming and pissing herself. Now she was stiff and arching her neck and lunging on her side.

Tom said, gently, “You’ve got to pull the plug on this, Carol.”

“I know. I know. I will. But we can’t move her right now, she’s too sick.”

Tom and I put our hands on Phay and talked to her gently as she thrashed around. It’s such a helpless feeling. Previously, she had come out of the seizure after only a few minutes and then it was a while before she recognized us. Now it seemed like it was going on…and on…and on. Many, many minutes went by as Phay screamed, sending spittle flying. All we could do was gently keep our hands on her to let her know that we were there. I kept thinking she would eventually come out of it like before.

This was not meant to be.

What she did do was when she recovered enough to be able to walk— she started marching. Manically marching, around and around the room, circling the perimeter of the room, panting anxiously. Around and around, a hundred times. Tom sat down on the daybed. I tried to hold Phay to get her to stop but she would break free and kept marching, rubbing against the outer walls.

I said, “Oh my god, this is like The Yellow Wallpaper.”

“Only worse,” Tom said.

Every so often, during one of her loops, I would hold up a bowl of water and she would drink thirstily. After several rounds of water, she squatted down and peed what seemed like a gallon of urine. Phay’s eyes flew open in fear that she was going to be reprimanded, but I smiled at her and gave her permission to do whatever she needed to do. It was only an oriental rug—it could be cleaned.

Finally, after what seemed like hours, Phay started to get tired and I got her to lie down on her bed. She was still panting anxiously. I started to massage her and this seemed to begin to calm her down. I dimmed the lights way down low. I heard a gentle snore and looked up to see that Tom had fallen asleep. He was too long for the daybed so his legs were hanging over the end, but he was fast asleep.

I rolled up in a blanket and lay down next to Phay and started massaging her hind end. She seemed to really enjoy this and she kept moving her butt toward me to get a better angle for the massage. I knew I was lying in urine and her fur that was shedding as I rubbed was sticking to my urine soaked arms, but I didn’t care at this point. I just kept thinking she’d come out of it.

As her labored breathing eased a little bit, I was at her head and Phay laid her white muzzle on my chest. She looked me square in the eyes and she raised both eyebrows. I knew what she was saying to me. My throat was almost too tight to speak, but I did.

“Okay, Phay, I know it’s time to let you go. You’ve been a great dog. I remember when Kudra and I brought you home from the pound. You were so afraid of people that you wouldn’t get in the car—do you remember that? Now being in the car is your favorite thing in the whole world. But that day, you tried to strong-arm us; you wouldn’t bend your legs. Kudra and I had to lift you—stiff-legged—into the back seat and you rode the whole way home standing straight up. And then you didn’t know how to go up stairs. Wow, that was a long time ago, Phay.”

Phay closed her eyes and started to rest. I must have dozed off with my hand on her shoulder. That’s when I felt the first jolt. It felt like 1000 volts of electricity jolted through Phay’s body.

“Phay, NO!”

This time her screams were agonizing. Tom jumped up.

“We are out of here!” he yelled. Somehow, he grabbed Phay in her whole bed and carried her to the door. I ran ahead of him and opened the back hatch of the Jeep and he placed her in the back. I flattened the seats so I could be with her. Somehow, our other dog, our fifteen year old Newfy mutt, Gladys, was standing beside the car. Tom scooped Gladys up and put her in the front passenger seat and we were racing to Caves.

I was riding backwards as we transported Phay to the hospital. I was holding her as she thrashed. She just would not give up. I kept talking to her softly, telling her it wasn’t going to be long now. Every so often I would stick my head up and see the route backwards, St. Paul’s School, Concord Hospital, Concord High School. This made me dizzy so I only looked down and stroked Phay. HURRY!

Tom called Caves on the way to tell them we were coming in. It was 6:00 AM. When we got there a vet and a vet tech were waiting with a stretcher. They took Phay away to sedate her with IV valium and left Tom and I to sign the euthanasia consent. Tom and I sat numbly waiting in the waiting room. We were staring straight ahead, holding hands. Tom said he felt liked he’d been hit by a bus.

The vet tech took us to a side room and then they wheeled in Phay. She was pretty out of it but I know she recognized us. The vet asked if we wanted more time. I said, “No.” The vet skillfully injected two syringes of clear fluid and Phay was gone. They wheeled Phay back to the car and put her in the back. She looked like she was sleeping. Gladys saw Phay and her eyes got huge. She definitely knew that Phay wasn’t “sleeping.”

We drove the long way home. Tom had big silent tears rolling down his cheeks. When we got to the Long Pond reservoir, we pulled over to the side of the road. The sun was rising and it was a glorious spring morning with the early light sparkling on the water. I laced my fingers in Tom’s calloused hand and we sat quietly as the morning unfolded.

Phaedra 1999 ~ 3/7/2012

Tom and I have been together long enough now that the pets that we acquired in the early bloom of our relationship have all become noble senior citizens. We have two dogs and two cats and not one is younger than an octogenarian. Lately, I’ve been feeling like we are running a nursing home for four-legged assisted living.

Tom’s dog, Gladys is 15 (that’s 105 in dog years). She seems fine, although she occasionally has dizzy spells, is stone deaf and is blind in one eye. But her will is as enthusiastic as when she was a puppy—it’s just that the body doesn’t follow suit so well these days. Gladys is Tom’s first and only dog. She went to work with him on construction sites every day for fourteen years.

Gladys has occasional gastro-intestinal issues—which causes her to shit upstairs in a back bedroom at night. I’ve gone through about fifty throw rugs. We found if we don’t feed her commercial dog food that she is much better. I’m not sure what kind of cancerous mystery meat they’re putting in canned dog food, but it disturbs the crap out of her. Now we feed her an old lady’s dinner of canned pumpkin and cottage cheese and saltines at night and she is fine. In the morning we cook her a breakfast of boiled white rice and green beans and ground turkey. A dog’s breakfast—fit for a queen. I swear I spend more time cooking for Gladys than I do for us.

My dog, Phaedra, is probably around 13—she was a found pound hound so I’m not sure exactly how old she is. She’s been a great dog but recently she started having horrific seizures. Really terrifying to watch—long minutes of paddling and snapping at the air, screaming and pissing herself. When she comes out of the seizures, she doesn’t recognize us for a while. It is assumed that she has a brain tumor that is causing swelling. I was going to put her down but my vet, whom I adore, put her on Prednisone and Phenobarbital and she seems stable on that. Actually, yesterday she was running around playing with a stick like she was a puppy again.

The downside to these medications is that they make Phay incredibly thirsty and she drinks copious amounts of water. They also make her incontinent, so she is leaking like an old Chevy. I spend my days running around with towels wiping up pools of urine on the floor where she’s been sleeping. We’ve rolled up all the rugs. Do they make doggie Depends?

The house smells like my old friend Dow after he’d been on a month long bender. I don’t know how long I can hang with this.

Gladys and Phaedra are both large black mixed breeds. They weigh between 70 and 80 pounds, so getting them in and out of cars has become a struggle. Tom can lift them easily, but I have to create kind of a ramp deal to get them in. I am getting a good workout by dead-lifting these beatches. I have also started giving them a daily massage.

We have a mean old alley cat named Tabouli. My son brought her home from Manhattan 17 years ago. She is probably the nastiest, snarliest cat ever born. She is also now about the size of a hassock.—huge. She’s a calico cat, white with large black and brown splotches. From behind, she looks like a giant soccer ball. If she’s pissed off, she will randomly approach a dog and hiss and smack her in the face for no apparent reason. She is ill-tempered and absolutely miserable—and she’s lucky she’s still alive. I’m just too afraid of her to try to get her in a carrier to bring her to the vet.

The last time I brought Tabouli to the vet for a check-up was many years ago because it was a true nightmare. First, I put her in a cardboard cat carrier. I don’t know what I was thinking. Tabouli shredded her way through the cardboard before I was even out the door. She made mincemeat out of that measly carrier. The only thing I had at the time to carry her in was a large picnic cooler. I put her in the cooler and brought her to the vet for her shots. At the animal hospital, she was pounding on the top of the cooler so violently that I had to put my foot on the top to keep her from smashing her way out. I was standing on the cooler as people recoiled in horror as to what could possibly be making such a snarling, hissing, growling racket inside a picnic cooler.

Finally, a timid older woman spoke up for everyone in the room, “Do you mind my asking what you’ve got in there?”

I responded gravely, “Tasmanian Devil.”

Everyone shifted to the other side of the waiting room.

Tom says Tabouli needs a long walk with Doctor Remington.

Tabouli lives on the third floor, which is accessed by a steel spiral staircase. Tabouli is so heavy now that when she goes up and down it sounds like an elephant is stomping on the metal stairs. I’ve recently changed her name to Catzilla.

Our other cat, Shrimpy, is a pretty cool cat. Shrimpy is the “youngster” of the bunch being only 81 in human years. Shrimpy was foisted off on me as a kitten by a friend who claimed that Shrimpy was a descendant of calico cats kept by a crazy, famous cat lady/artist in Nova Scotia. Shrimpy is a great huntress and goes in and out of the house from a window that we leave ajar for her because the window opens onto the second floor roof system. The only problem with this arrangement is the window is right over the headboard of our bed so there is a lot of traffic in and out directly over Tom’s head.

This winter, when the window was closed, Shrimpy would try to pry it open with her claw in the middle of the night. This was not conducive to sleep. One night while she was picking at the window, I sort of batted at her to get her to stop. She jumped down but landed on Tom’s sleeping face. I could feel Tom radiating sheer fury. He was seething.

“Did Shrimpy just scratch you?” I asked as I turned on the light.

Tom turned to me and I saw he had eight bleeding puncture wounds on his face. He looked like a bloody pin-cushion.

It was at this moment that I heard Shrimpy heave and gack up a partially digested mouse under our bed.

Even though this geriatric care for ancient animals has become a royal P.I.T.A., we love our girls. Tom and I both know the specter of the “Youth in Asia” decision is looming mightily. It’s definitely coming sooner rather than later. I just hope that we can make this decision in a timely manner. I do not want them to suffer. I want them to be comfortable in their final days. In this perspective, all the cooking and cleaning and massaging just seems like payback for all those years of unconditional love and companionship from them. I know we don’t have much time left.

I guess Dow didn’t really smell that bad after all. I can hang with it.

~ Carol Leonard from Bad Beaver Tales, Volume II, Sumbitchin Barn, 2013

Phaedra and Gladys

I have a young friend who had the first baby to be born at my birth center, Longmeadow Farm Birthing Home. It was a true honor to be able to attend her and it was a great birth. I remember a fabulous quote from her in labor. When she was in transition, she was reclining in the tub with candles lit all around her and soft music playing in the background. A student midwife was gently pouring warm water over her belly.

She said, “I feel like an Egyptian Queen…a regal Egyptian Queen who is writhing around in excruciating pain.”

This young woman was a single mom. When her baby was about four months old she decided she wanted to get out of the house and party for the night. It was New Years Eve. She got all glammed up. I saw her on her way to the music hall where she was going to let loose for a moment with a well-deserved break from solo motherhood.

She looked beautiful. She had on a strapless black dress that was flirty and a little bit naughty. Her long blond hair was newly washed and fluffed up. She had on eye makeup for the first time in months. Really, she was stunning.

I said, “Knock ‘em dead, kid.”

She said she was really having a great time. She was reveling in the freedom of having her body back to herself. For a brief moment she could forget that she had a dependant human being who was attached to her breasts 24/7. She was dancing her ass off. At one point late in the evening, she was dancing with a very cute guy. They were really hitting it off. She was rocking the moment.

Rocking it until, to her sheer horror, she saw that one of her nursing pads had escaped its confine and was lying on the dance floor at their feet. There it was in all its “contoured shape for exceptional fit” glory. She was mortified. Maybe if she ignored it, it would go away.

She stood stone still as the cute guy noticed the nursing pad and leaned over and picked it up.

He said, “Oh look, someone lost their yarmulke.”

Season’s Greetings and a Happy New Year
from BAD BEAVER FARM!

From Carol and Tom,
At the end of February, Carol fell on the ice in Dog Poop Alley and suffered a radial head fracture of the elbow. The whole story can be found on her blog at:
http://badbeaverfarm.com/blog/index.php/2011/03/10/the-saga-of-my-broken-arm/ Contrary to medical advice, Carol took her cast off and signed up for a strength training class for senior women. She worked out with 80+ year old women doing weights and resistance training with those lovely ladies until she was able to pick her nose with her left hand. Her arm was completely healed in less than 6 weeks thanks to those feisty old gals. (And now she wears YakTraks to get old deaf Gladys out of the compost pile at night.)

Carol’s book Lady’s Hands, Lion’s Heart, A Midwife’s Saga, became a run-away best-seller and was approved as a Sociology textbook for use in all colleges in the US. That’s what happens when you get this old…everything you did in the past is now considered to be of historical significance. The original manuscript of LHLH is in the Margaret Sanger Archives at Smith College.

In March, Tom and his brother, Lee, left for an epic cross-country motorcycle trip on their BMW GSs. They were gone for 2 weeks and got as far as Tucson, Arizona. They froze their nuts off on the way back but they made it home safe and sound.

Tom is working on getting a patent on an invention he developed called The Bad Beaver Shingle Shortcut. It’s a gizmo that makes sidewall shingling a breeze. He demonstrated it while shingling our little cabin in Ellsworth, CAMP KWITCHABITCHIN, with cedar shingles made from our own cedar trees. He says I can’t say anymore about it because it is Top Secret. Tom is still a very busy beaver and despite the downturn in the economy, he is over-committed with building jobs as usual.

On July 3rd, we did our annual ride in the URAL to the top of Mount Cadillac at dawn to watch the sunrise for our SIXTH wedding anniversary (Tom says it feels more like 60.) Brother Lee and his girlfriend, Nancy Benedix, rode in their URAL with us. It is such a beautiful ride watching that breathtaking ocean view winding up and down the mountain in the sidecar. What a blessing. Later that day, we had our annual Lobstah Bash at The SeaWitch with a boat-load of relatives and friends and much crustacean body parts.

In mid-September, Carol took a course with NH Fish and Game called “Field Dressing Big Game.” The story can be found on her blog at: http://badbeaverfarm.com/blog/index.php/2011/09/15/the-gutters-5/

THE NEW BARN AT BAD BEAVER!

In late September, Tom finally realized his dream and began work on his barn at Bad Beaver. Liam (AKA “Casey”) O’Brien came to stay with us at the Beeve for two weeks to help Tom get it built. The barn is maniacally engineered. Tom has been building it in his brain for years. It is insane. The second floor is supported with 4 enormous (30’) steel I beams from a NH highway overpass. The whole thing went up like a giant erector set with the help of his 2 LULLS. Now Tom can drive all his equipment around inside the barn without being hampered by columns. (A must have, apparently, in a man-cave.)

There are 120 roof rafters in the barn. Tom cut all the lumber for the barn from our own trees with his sawmill! The roof rafters are HUGE. They are 2 x 10 x 30’ and weigh 150 lbs. each. Tom physically lifted every single one up to Liam who was waiting up on a cat-walk. They got all 120 rafters in place in one day. Lots of Ibuprophen for dinner that night.

Tom and Liam pushed like hell but they got it done in 13 days.
DAY THIRTEEN ~ 10/8/11. The barn is 30’ x 70’, 4200 sq.ft. Designed and engineered by Tom Lajoie, the baddest dam beaver of them all.

The barn looks like an antique New England barn from the drive and the gable ends. The far-side has 5 huge bays for all of Tom’s equipment. A great quote overheard from Tom describing his structure, “The first impression of the barn is one of New England tranquility. The far-side looks like JiffyLube.”

Milan still lives in Bar Harbor with his girlfriend, Nina Donghia. They have a quaint little cottage at the base of Mount Cadillac. This is great for us because we get to see them when we go to Ellsworth. They have a band, Coke Weed, that is very popular in Maine. Their new video just came out:

Coke Weed – Magpie
www.youtube.com
The second single from our new album – available 2012.

I absolutely adore this song. Milan writes the music and Nina is the singer. Hauntingly beautiful.

Lastly, we put our house in NH on the market with LandVest in early December. http://landvest.com/property/13896980/585-Hopkinton-Road-Hopkinton-NH-03229 It is a huge move for us but we are ready to commit to Maine for the long haul. The real estate market is about as shitty as it’s ever been…but we decided to pull the plug on this thing and see what happens. We’ve already had one showing. Actually, if Hopkinton does sell immediately…we’re going to be living in JiffyLube.

We hope that you are healthy and content and joyful. We send you our love and best wishes for 2012.
SMOOCH! Carol and Tom, Gladys (who is still going strong at 15), Phaedra Louise, “foster dog” Matilda, Taboulie (AKA: Catzilla), Shrimpy and all the chickens.

8/25/2011
~ For Gerry Hamilton ~

Hello and Good Evening.
My name is Carol Leonard and I am a midwife. Actually, Christine and I were the first two midwives practicing in Concord. Gerry Hamilton was my OB backup since I was a kid really…since I was 26 years old. I’m not going to tell you how old I am now…but that was like 400 years ago.

But that’s not why I am here tonight. I am here because Gerry was also my buddy. I am here because tonight is the most inappropriate time to tell a dirty joke. So in true Hamilton tradition, I am going to honor Gerry by launching into an off-color joke…oblivious to the fact that it may make some people pass-out.

Forgive me Christine. Gerry, this one’s for you…

So, there is this skinny little old lady in a nursing home. She’s naked and she’s wearing a purple cape. She keeps running up to groups of little old men…and she flashes them, yelling,
“SUPER PUSSY!” and then she runs away.
She runs up to some more little old men, and yells,
“SUPER PUSSY!” and then she runs away again.
Finally, she runs up to a little old man who has had quadruple by-pass surgery and she flashes him, and yells,
“SUPER PUSSY!”
and he looks at her (scrunches up face–disgusted) and he says,
“I’LL HAVE THE SOUP.”

GODSPEED GERRY! WE LOVE YOU!