Warning: Long and Weird (But Wonderful).

I asked Jess (on Tumblr) who would win in a fight, a rooster or a beaver. She said:

That does take some contemplation (which I just had real issues spelling). I must warn you now that I like beavers quite a lot, so I am probably biased.

Mmkay, so a rooster has very spindly legs, and probably isn’t overly strong. Certainly not as strong as a beaver. I mean, they’re quite…stocky looking. Plus, beavers have those big teeth. I think that a rooster, which I imagine would be faster/more agile than a beaver, would be more inclined to run away if it got into a fight with a beaver, and the beaver probably wouldn’t be able to catch it. However, that’s not a win, more of a default.

In saying that, roosters have a fighting history - cock fighting, that is - so maybe because of that they’d be less chicken than one would assume. Haha.

I think that if they were forced into close combat, then the beaver would try to use its weight and larger mass to its advantage, and the rooster would try and be more ninja, using its agility. But I think in the end, it would be the beaver coming out on top. Just because one bite from those sharp teeth to that scrawny neck would end that rooster.And the rooster might get disqulified, for fighting ‘fowl’! AHAHA! Lordy, am I funny or what?

Yeah, sorry about that.

But, I think that we have neglected the real question here. Why would a beaver and a rooster be fighting in the first place? Did the beaver covet the rooster’s hens? Did the rooster enroach on the beaver’s dam? Or did the beaver just get pissed off at the rooster’s insistence at having sex very early in the morning, leading to loud orgasmic noises before sun-up? (Yes, that is the real reason that cocks crow in the morning).

So, this has been another episode of “Cap’n Hans Lee O’Flanaghan, Sr. (Esq.) Dribbles On About Silly Things”. Tune in next time, for more dribbling on about silly things.In the name of science.

And then Jess asked: Why would a beaver and a rooster get into a fight? Huh?

And I said: Oh, well I see you don’t know.

You see, back in the early 1580s, when the first roosters arrived in Canada, there was a bloody feud involving the two species. It went on unnoticed by humans- except perhaps by the odd observant person who realised that beavers sometimes included bones in the building of their dams- for almost 75 years. To this day, we are not quite sure of the reason. Some argue a turf-war, others an inter-species abomination sparked from a Romeo&Juliet type fandango.
In May of 1656 a treaty was signed, in which both parties agreed to a ceasefire, provided that none of either party crossed the boundary line. This line was situated in the southern Canadian territory Manitoba, slightly to the east of Winnipeg.

Just ten years later the Rooster King, Crowing-Cloud, issued private orders to his SS division for a terrorist attack on the nearby beaver barracks in Edmonton, Alberta, where the Beaver King and his Queen (Sotchi Sotchi and Sachi Sotchi Sotchi) temporarily resided. His reason: the young son of the Beaver King and Queen had crept under cover of darkness into Manitoba the night before and plundered the best branches of his home tree.

The attack proceeded smoothly at first, killing Satchi Satchi and his wife in a swift, merciless battle. The SS failed, however, to capture their son, a quick witted fellow by the name of Henry. During his escape to the north of Albert, Henry gathered an army. What followed was a slaughter. He marched through Saskatchewan and back through Manitoba to Ontario and Quebec, deep into rooster territory. Almost the whole population of roosters was killed in the genocide, including Crowing-Cloud and his closest friend and Uncle, Fire-Tail.

Hundreds of years later, Canadian beavers are still on the hunt for stray roosters, and attack them whenever possible.

We know of this now mainly because of the beaver burial grounds in Southern Quebec, where thousands of rooster corpses were hidden in the dense forests. The bones show obvious beaver bites and scratches. The extra information comes from “dam-art”, drawings made by scribes in the ancient homes of long-gone beaver generations.

Are we weird or what? :3