Hi, this is Dylan Thuris, and you have reached the Atlas Obscura podcast line.

I'm not home right now, but please leave me a message about the places you gained or discovered during the pandemic.

After the beep.

Hi, my name is Betsy Bird.

I live in Evanston, Illinois. During COVID, I started taking walks. Of course I did.

There was a lot of places to go outside. There were no places to go inside. I lived in my town for about six years at this point, and eventually my steps took me to Northwestern University.

Northwestern's a beautiful campus, lots of space.

So I'd go out before work early in the morning, and of yes, work was from home.

And I'd walk on the campus.

And at Northwestern, there is this little peninsula but to get to

the peninsula you have to go over this tiny bridge I would go over the tiny bridge and I'd

looked out and one day I saw a very large rodent swimming, like just really, really big.

You probably know where this is going.

It was a beaver.

So, beavers live, or at least at that point, lived on the campus of Northwestern.

They were huge, probably for Northwest Northwestern due to the fact that

North Western would plant tiny trees and the beavers would then gleefully, I imagine, cut through

the plastic webbing around the trees and tear them down and take them and they built a little home

in this area between the peninsula and the mainland by Northwestern.

I got so obsessed with beavers. I can't even tell you.

Peavers are amazing animals.

My specialty is children's literature, and there's this book called Beaver's Superpowered Field Guide by Rachel Pollopin.

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