Once They Were Hats

“Unexpectedly delightful reading—there is much to learn from the buck-toothed rodents of yore” ( National Post ).   Beavers, those icons of industriousness, have been gnawing down trees, building dams, shaping the land, and creating critical habitat in North America for at least a million years. Once one of the continent’s most ubiquitous mammals, they ranged from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and from the Rio Grande to the edge of the northern tundra. Wherever there was wood and water, ther