Well this jaunty column will hold your attention. The writing is clever even if the beaver management is…er…not.

Robert Ducharme: Mr. Busy and Peter Rabbit

If you live or have lived in a condominium association, nothing gets the dander of owners to rise faster than fights over pets. Some love them; some hate them. Everyone has an opinion.

But dogs and cats are not the only critters that have raised concerns at associations. There are others, sometimes not with the result you would think. And frequently not pets. In 2018 in rural North Carolina an association had a problem with beavers. Yes, beavers. (Mr. Busy is from Lady and the Tramp.) Seems local beaver dams were blocking Pokeberry Creek, causing water to rise and threatening the association’s boardwalks and bridges. (They have 24 miles of trails, so it’s large, rural and wildlife invested.)

Okay, we remember the beavers of Pokeberry Creek, in fact the people who cared about them still have a website. But this is the fun part.

It takes a lot of beavers to create such a problem and the association estimated it had three dozen beavers creating its perceived problem. The board of directors was stumped (no pun intended), and looked at alternatives such as raising or replacing the boardwalks and bridges, but deemed that solution more expensive than necessary, so it called the authorities. The U.S Department of Agriculture came, poked around, evaluated the site, and informed the board of directors that if the board wanted to go forward and solve the problem by removing the beavers, it could be done, but the beavers could not be trapped and relocated, but would have to be killed.

Three dozen beavers on a 7 mile creek? Why only three dozen. Why not a MILLION. If you’re going to pull random numbers out of your ass you may as well pick a bigger one.?

Of course a single family of beavers can build an awful lot of dams to cause condo-chaos. It’s not that hard. A single lilac mailbox can cause condo-chaos on most days. What I HATE about this is that some “experts” came in and cited that number. and everyone just believed it.

The truth is that BEAVERS ARE TERRITORIAL. There is zero way that 36 beavers worked together like furry mischief communists to cause you problems.

I’m sure the numbers were just inflated to make it seem like moving them was too hard.

Why killed and not moved? It seems in North Carolina beavers are, by law, considered a nuisance, and as such the law prohibits trapping and moving them. So they had to be killed; the board of directors was OK with that solution; and it so informed its fellow owners. But the board of directors did not expect the reaction of fellow homeowners and neighbors in the larger community. Outrage would be considered mild. So, two days later the board noted it was going to take a step back and consider other alternatives.

Ahh when the people lead the leaders will follow…they say. It worked in Martinez. Not sure whether it actually works in North Carolina condominiums, but it’s worth a shot.

Unfortunately, try as I might, I cannot find anything that details whether the beavers lived or died. The association’s website doesn’t mention anything about the beavers, though there is a picture of a new boardwalk. So, perhaps the unnamed solution was to pay to raise the bridges and boardwalks. If not, it would seem the board simply decided the beavers weren’t worth a dam. (No word on whether fur sales rose in the community.)

Let me guess what happened. I’m good at these.

There is one amusing side note to this story. Wikipedia tells me that Pokeberry Creek is a tributary to the Haw river. Which interests me because way back 15 years ago when I was frantically trying to find information about coexisting with beavers there were THREE helpful sites on the entire universe of google (imagine that!). One was Beavers: wetlands and wildlife, one was the old beaver solutions website, and the other was the Haw River Assembly.

I just thought you’d want to know.