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BRILLIANT BEAVERS BUILD HOUSE MADE OF MONEY
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GREENSBURG, Louisiana (AP) -- These eager beavers had a whole
new slant on money laundering.
A bag of bills stolen from a casino was snapped up by beavers
who wove thousands of dollars in soggy currency into the sticks
and brush of their dam on a creek in eastern Louisiana.
"They hadn't torn the bills up. They were still whole," said Maj. Michael
Martin of the East Feliciana Parish sheriff's office.
The money was part of $70,000 to $75,000 taken last week from
the Lucky Dollar Casino in Greensburg.
St. Helena Parish deputies searched for the money for days until
a lawyer, hoping to make a deal with prosecutors for a client, called
and said the money had been discarded in the creek, Police Chief
Ronald Harrell said.
Officers searched the creek during the weekend, finding one money
bag right away and spotting a second downstream against the beaver
dam.
The third bag of cash couldn't be found, Martin said, so deputies
started breaking down the beaver dam to drain the pond it was
holding. That was when they saw the dam's expensive decoration.
They eventually found the missing bag, which the beavers hadn't
completely emptied.
"The casino people were elated" to get the money back, even if
some of it was wet, Harrell said.
Altogether, deputies found about $40,000, and they expect to find
the rest in a safety deposit box at a bank in Mississippi, authorities said.
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