There is a certain brand of Swiss existential dread that can only be triggered by the sound of a midnight splash and the slow, rhythmic crunch of a century-old oak tree surrendering to the relentless mandibles of a rodent with a better legal team than you. Zurich, a city known for its precision watches and clandestine banking, has officially hit its breaking point with the arrival of the beaver—a creature that is currently treating the Swiss landscape like an all-you-can-gnaw buffet with zero regard for property rights.

The Beaver Advisory Centre—a name that sounds like something you’d quickly delete from your browser history before your spouse walks in—has established a crisis hotline to handle the influx of citizens currently losing their minds. It is a place where ecologists spend their days talking down enraged homeowners who are one more downed willow away from declaring a personal vendetta involving high-powered woodchippers and a lack of moral restraint.

The statistics are harrowing: Switzerland is in the midst of a "beaver boom," with the population skyrocketing to nearly 5,000 furry squatters. These rodents are the ultimate immigrants—reintroduced in 1956 and immediately granted a level of diplomatic immunity that would make a UN official weep with envy. They don't check real estate prices, they don't apply for building permits, and they certainly don't care about your "emotional investment" in a tree that has been in your family since the Napoleonic Wars.

“It’s a battle of wills between the pinnacle of human engineering and a glorified water-rat who thinks your structural foundation is just a suggestion for a dam.”

The response from the Swiss government has been typically extravagant, allocating up to one million francs annually to "beaver damage." This is more than most municipalities spend on actual human children, but children aren't currently causing sinkholes in the middle of Hettlingen’s main roads. Public works employees report calling the beaver hotline up to 20 times a year—which is significantly more often than they call their own mothers, though both conversations likely involve a lot of whining about things they can't control.

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The irony, of course, is that while these beavers are busy bankrupting the local treasury and turning manicured lawns into swampy alluvial forests, the ecologists are cheering. They call it "free river restoration." To the average Swiss citizen, it looks like their backyard is being repossessed by nature’s most persistent civil engineers. The beavers have created wetlands supporting six times the biodiversity of human-managed rivers, mostly because they are the only workforce that doesn't demand a pension or a 35-hour work week. They continue their work, unbothered by permits or human concepts of property, proving that if you’re furry enough and legally untouchable, the world really is your oyster—or at least, your oak tree.

Disclaimer: This article is a satirical interpretation and not factually based. It was inspired by the reporting found at: https://oddnews.com/article/are-you-having-issues-with-your-beaver-a-swiss-hotline-would-like-to-know/