Police investigate Chinatown beaver

So I slipped my press pass in the rim of my fedora this morning and called Boston Animal Control. No beavers in Chinatown, the woman there said. But they did send somebody out to investigate a groundhog, she said.

"Oh," I replied, "Could I get some details on that?"

That was asking for too much apparently, because she said I'd have to speak to the press office - and she promptly connected me to Mayor Thomas M. Menino's press office, where another woman laughed when I told her why I was calling, took my name and number and said she or somebody else would get back to me.

Which, of course, they didn't, since they never do.

So the mystery lingers, even if "groundhog" doesn't lend itself to the same level of commentary as "beaver." But as I learned last year, with my own groundhog sighting, groundhogs are sometimes called "land beavers," so there is that.