6/25/07 Baby Beavers!

Quirky here, coming to you once again with insider Knoxville Zoo information that you just won't find anywhere else!

At approximately 4pm on Saturday, Tony received a call that the new baby beavers in Kids Cove had been born! (Of course, he wasn't carrying his phone at the time, so he didn't actually listen to the message until Sunday morning, but as soon as we heard it we had to rush right over to see them).

Beatrice Beaver and Bevo Beaver are the proud new parents of 3 little baby beavers! The new additions effectively double the beaver population at the zoo. (You can snicker, but this is a family blog, so keep your beaver jokes to yourself please).

Anyway, the baby beavers are about the size of Beanie Babies, and kind of resemble small guinea pigs, except that their little fur sticks out all over, so think guinea pig with a 'fro. They are soooo cute! (As soon as I get pictures, I'll post them).

Currently, the entire Beaver family is locked in the den, which has been closed off to the public until the new arrivals have had a chance to settle in. (Zoo sources say that they expect the den door to be unlocked sometime this week to allow access to the water again. No word yet on when Beatrice Beaver will teach the new babies to swim).

Tony is very bummed now that he left the zoo. It's been a lifelong dream of his to perform a synchronized swimming beaver show. (Think of Shamu swimming in formation and leaping through hoops...now exchange Shamu with a family of beavers...now quit laughing at Tony's lifelong dreams). Alas, the zoo didn't find out that Bevo Beaver was really a boy beaver and that Beatrice really was a girl beaver until after Tony left the zoo, so the days of the Fantastic Tony's Traveling Beaver Show never materialized.

But you can still head by the zoo to see if you can spot the new babies learning to swim in a non-synchronized fashion.