Do some good this Christmas – Exterminate Beavers

As goodwill Christmas messages go, “Exterminate Beavers” has got to be one of the most bizarre.

It is hardly up there with the more traditional “Season’s Greetings” “Goodwill to all men” and “Merry Christmas” and seems a really bizarre request to make of anyone – especially to a Christmas audience.

However it is the message which appears on millions of leaflets which have been printed for a Russian charity group.

It appears as a huge headline on a picture-postcard scene of a pine forest during a snow storm.

In the front of the poster an excited little child, wearing a red Santa hat, looks delightedly into a snow globe.

The ‘Mercy Capital’ charitable foundation had the leaflets printed as part of their “Do good” charity campaign to encourage people to give donations.

But what has any of that to do with asking people to exterminate beavers?

The answer is – absolutely nothing and it was all a terrible mistake. A mix up at the printers ended up with the leaflets calling for the mass killing of beavers when they should simply have said “Do good.”

‘Exterminate beavers! Text the word ‘vremya’ and the amount of your donation to the SMS number 7715,’ the caption read.

Charity worker Ivan Makarov told the Moscow Times that they had to scrap the whole consignment of leaflets.

He said: “I fear that people might really start exterminating beavers, if the foundation starts handing out leaflets like these, the way they are now.”

Now the charity and the printing company are in dispute over who is to blame for the error.

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