Meh WRT "shoot (a) beaver": HDAS, 1969

[Wilson Gray]

FWIW, I've heard this only as "shoot beaver," with no article.

IAC, while "doing me," as they say, I came across the 78,

"Beavershot" / "Beaver Shot," by the Hollywood Hurricanes, on the Pr1ma
[sic] label, released in 1964.

Unfortunately, the recording's only words consist of the band shouting
"Beavershot!" / "Beaver Shot!" from time to time. So, there's no clear
indication of any definite connection with "shoot (a) beaver."

Further FWIW, I have an anecdote, surprisingly. Or annoyingly, as the case
may be.Ca. 1964, when I was working for the Los Angeles Department of Water
& Power - for those who've seen the movie, "Chinatown," I worked not for
the infamous Water, but for the innocuous Power - our supervisor related
the story that his ten-year-old daughter had told him about the girls
playing a game called "shooting beaver" with the boys at her grade school.
When he asked her what that was, she said the it meant that the girls were
opening their thighs so as to give the boys a peek at the girls' panties.

That's the only time that I've heard the term used. It was about a dozen
years later that I found about the use of "beaver" and "split beaver" to
refer to a woman's pubic hair and even to the woman herself - TV dialogue:
"That stupid beaver!" - so that "shoot beaver" suddenly made a kind of
sense.
--
-Wilson
-----
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"---a strange complaint to
come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-Mark Twain

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