Dutch police confuse beaver with burglar

This punk rock music video is Burglar, by The Damned.

And this is a video about beavers.

Police do not always seem to know the difference (like British soldiers in Afghanistan don’t know the difference between mung beans and opium poppy seeds).

Translated from Dutch news agency ANP:

November 15, 2012 11:29

Police think beaver is a burglar

ALMERE – A beaver in the night from Wednesday to Thursday caused quite some commotion in Almere.

Law enforcement services shot into action en masse, because policemen mistook the swimming animal for a fugitive burglar.

According to a police spokesman the cops reacted to a burglar alarm at a business and, when they arrived, they heard a splash. One of them also thought he saw a head in the water.

Both the fire department and a police helicopter were summoned to catch the ‘burglar’. Only after using an infrared camera it became clear that the law enforcers were not pursuing a burglar, but an adult-sized beaver.

December 2012. A study, run by Scottish Natural Heritage (SNH), has confirmed that approximately 146 beavers are presently living in the wild in rivers in Tayside. Surveys from May and July 2012, along with long-term observations, found that there are about 40 groups of beavers and seven dams in the Tay catchment. The beavers were found in the Tayside rivers and lochs stretching from Kinloch Rannoch, Kenmore and beyond Crieff in the west, to Forfar, Perth and Bridge of Earn in the East: here.

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