Do you like beaver?

Do you like beaver?

I love them.

In a sense they are cultural beings, just like us, maybe more driven by instinct’s power within their genes then we are. Just like us they are forming their habitat, building artful dams that allow them to life their way of aquatic life, transporting yummy woody sticks home to their timber castles. We on the other hand build highways to life our mobile live, transporting ourselves in rolling 2 ton metal castles to wherever we want to be at a given moment in time. Which is great but rather unsustainable, therefore our little private mobile existence will sooner or later come to end whereas innocent beaver will still build his water world.

Having reached Methuselah age and finally going there where all beavers have to go one day, after a happy existence in untouched forests, for instance in Canada’s wild north, our lovely beaver is the natural source of a fragrance that is remarkable and was of high value to perfumers in the past: Castoreum, the fragrant extract of beaver glands. It is –in dilution!- a wonderful scent, very indol-like, a dream fixative, woody mossy aspects, a few drops lasting for ever. Now, most beavers these days do not really die in their sleep, modern mobile men is driving with 4 wheel drive into the woods, hunting pretty beaver lady for her natural furry cover to fabricate a less natural cover for uptown beauties. That’s man’s advantage of being on the very top of the food chain; you get furs for almost nothing, some meat with it and Castoreum.

For those among you who do not want to use Castoreum, feeling sorry for little beaver while enjoying your steak ;-) , get Cepes absolute, from Eden botanicals for instance! Not in the sense that it would be a true substitute. This beautiful scent is rather in between beaver’s Castoreum and oakmoss, with edible qualities, very radiant somehow, a mossy sweetness in it, but I guess, it might be an interesting substitute worth considering in love of Mr and Ms beaver in their castle.