Reviews for When the Beaver Was the King

The average rating for When the Beaver Was the King based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2012-01-06 00:00:00 Robert Anthony This was Cuppy's third book of complaints about animals. It is mostly about mammals, but also gets into amphibians, birds, insects, worms, Greek poets, and practically everything else. It is rich in empirical science, such as, "A decapitated salamander cannot make quick decisions," and philosophical insights, such as, "Intelligence is the capacity to know what we are doing and instinct is just instinct. The results are about the same." And even aesthetics: "The wart hog is often called the ugliest of all animals but the rhinoceros is uglier because he is larger and there is more of him to be ugly." There is a section titled "Problem Mammals" but Cuppy seemed to have had problems with all the animals in this book, including "birds who can't even fly" and "birds who can't sing and know it." And wombats, of course. "Are wombats people?" he asks, rhetorically. Because animals are, after all, only human. Three whole chapters are devoted to wombats but I can't say they offer any useful advice on attracting them. No matter. After reading the three chapters you won't even want to attract them! Some people have accused Cuppy of making up things. I have never found any proof of this, but where did he get the factoid on page 116, that a snail can do the hundred yard dash in thirty hours flat? Can't help wondering about that one! Very funny. Cuppy-strength funny. One does not need to be a wombat fancier to enjoy this book, which is lavishly and delightfully illustrated by Ed Nofziger.

Review # 2 was written on 2020-04-13 00:00:00 Stephan Graham Delightful (and scrupulously researched) essays about wildlife, written by a hermit who lived in New York City. Most were originally published in The Saturday Evening Post and The New Yorker. "Baby Pelicans are simply awful. The female Pelican feeds them on predigested fish served in her pouch. When they become too greedy and noisy and generally unbearable, she closes her bill and hits them on the head with it, so that baby Pelicans are always staggering about in a dazed condition, squalling for more fish and getting whammed on the head again. As the force of such blows is hard to judge, little accidents occur from time to time. That's a risk you have to take. Moral: It's a great life, if you like fish." I got a lot of weird looks while reading this on the El.