"I don't get the joke. Is it dirty, or what?"
-Gerald Ford, 38th President of the United States of America (attributed)

You guys remember Bitter Lake?

Way back in the before times, when dinosaurs roamed the land, there was a tiny, micro-budget, barely feature-length "fan-movie" known as Bitter Lake, featuring a cast entirely clad in fursuit to represent its anthropomorphic animal characters, made by furries, for furries.

Before Bitter Lake, I'd never considered this method to realize a furry movie, and after Bitter Lake, well, I still haven't. Noble experiment, sure. Quality movie? Well, we're not reviewing Bitter Lake now, so let's just move along…

Hundreds of Beavers is a sort of outside the fandom take on the "fursuit movie" that, after playing film festivals last year, had a very short theatrical release this year before launching on various streaming services. It is a black-and-white, mostly dialogue-free slapstick comedy featuring newbie fur trapper Jean Kayak (co-writer Ryland Brickson Cole Tews) as he struggles to survive in the wilderness around the Great Lakes region of pre-United States America. Fellow co-writer Mike Cheslik directs. The movie features beavers, raccoons, rabbits, dogs, skunks and wolves, all played by actors in mascot costumes.

I reviewed District 14, Season 1 on Flayrah on February 12, 2013, saying:

Wow!

I don’t know what’s going on, but wow!

Three years have passed since Season 1. As before, the main character is the mysterious Babar-esque elephant immigrant known as Michael Elizondo, with his recently made best friend, the reckless investigative reporter Hector McKeagh the beaver.

Season 2 continues the elaborate comic-art “crime noir” mystery set in an early 20th-century steampunk version of New York City populated with humans, anthropomorphic animals and flying-saucer aliens.

Wow, indeed.

Translation by Anna Provitola, Los Angeles, Humanoids, Inc., January 2014, hardcover $39.95 (358 [+ 1] pages).

The 2015 Pan American Games are running an online vote until May 5 to choose their mascot. The six finalists, selected from 4,130 entries, are:

1) a Maple-leaf headed beaver	2) a moose	3) a multi-colour owl
4) a porcupine with multi-color quills	5) a raccoon	6) twins wearing hats

See more: Original finalist designs, prior to conversion to Pan Am colours and style by illustrator/animator James Caswell of Sheridan College.

Pixar story artist Jeff Pidgeon (Toy Story, etc.) is a toy fanatic. Not just a collector – he designs his own. After designing and manufacturing Happy Beaver and Trickster Fox, he has decided to open an online store to sell them and others that he will create. They will also be available at “select boutiques”.

Certainly Trickster Fox is anthropomorphic, and Happy Beaver probably is, also. Pidgeon’s store will have to be kept in mind by those wanting fine-art models of anthropomorphized animals.

Wired has an extensive interview with Pidgeon and twelve closeup illustrations of his characters from their clay models through their finished forms.

Does Sean Connery have a death wish?

That is the only reason that I can think of for his investing money, executive-producing, and voice-acting in the forthcoming first Scottish CGI animated feature, Sir Billi.

The Cartoon Brew website has the latest trailer, which is unbelievable. The humans and talking animals are the ugliest that I have ever seen. (Well, except for Hoodwinked, but that at least had a clever plot.)

Sir Billi is about, to quote CB’s Amid Amidi, a retired skateboarding bald senior-citizen veterinarian (Connery) with Gordon, his anthropomorphic homosexual pet goat with bladder problems, who wears a Bruce Lee-style yellow jumpsuit and thinks that he is a dog. Together they set out to rescue Bessie Boo, Scotland’s last beaver, and Wee Dave, a cute rabbit who helped raise her.

"Canada's Secret War Weapon Escapes!" — "IT'S COMIN' RIGHT FOR US!" — "Nickelodeon's 1990s Cartoon Based on True Canadian Stories?" — "Why did the Beaver Cross the Road?"

Any of those headlines would be equally accurate in this very odd story from Fort Smith in Canada's Northwest Territories.  The small, otherwise-sleepy northern town just north of the Alberta-NWT border was the victim of a rampaging beaver that alarmed several residents and prompted a call from the territory's Department of Environment and Natural Resources.

Long-running Canadian nature/pet magazine The Beaver this week announced its imminent re-branding as North American Pussy. The change comes after a shift towards smaller, more manageable companions.

Many Canadian girls used to keep beavers in the 70s and 80s, but with today's busy lifestyles, they are now far more likely to have a fluffy tail on their lap than a wet beaver – if there's anything there at all.

An eight-year old West Virginia girl was attacked by a rabid beaver in early July, reminding us all that even the least aggressive of animals can be dangerous under certain conitions. See this article for details.

A beaver found a chair on a porch just the place to spend the night. Complete article here.

What an Austrian conservation group spent 3 years trying to get permission for, unsucessfully, a beaver created overnight.
The group was trying to get a dam to help divert water into a dried out tributary vital of the local river ecology, and the baver built his dam in just the right spot for that to happen. The human dam builders think the beaver did a spot on job, and hope his good work will land the little fellow a mate come spring.