Besides all the great things you know about beavers – that they help salmon, that they store water, that they recharge the aquifer, that they remove nitrogen and save frogs and fight fires, well besides all THAT they are also just cool.
Don’t take my word for it.
Beaver lodges with satellite dishes on top of them dot the Canadian landscape
Brian Edwards was driving to work along Onion Lake Road in Thunder Bay, Ont., one morning in May when he saw something that made him question if he’d had enough coffee before leaving the house.
“It’s a beaver pond,” he explained, “so kind of a swampy area, [a] beaver house, so mud, sticks — and a grey satellite dish sitting on top.”
After a moment’s thought, Edwards decided it made perfect sense: The NHL was planning its comeback after a lengthy pause brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Clearly this beaver was a hockey fan. It needed a solid sports TV package to see all the games, Edwards said.
Now I love beavers a lot, but you can’t convince me that they’re hockey fans, No I suspect the usual culprits. Human pranksters that think it’s funny to imagine beavers needing entertainment. Our past 6 months of quarantine have given us a TINY taste of what beaver life is like every winter in colder climbs. They aren’t whiners. They take it in stride.
In northwestern Ontario, satellite dishes have been spotted atop beaver lodges near Red Lake and Rainy River First Nation.
The question is: how, and why?
“I could not locate this beaver lodge in our customer database — but sometimes satellite TV customers will move their service between their homes and vacation properties,” a Bell Canada spokesperson told CBC in an email.
Oh I can tell you why. And you could too. People are bored out of their freaking minds and need something to amuse themselves.
Beavers are technically capable of installing their own satellite dishes, said Glynnis Hood, a professor of environmental science at the University of Alberta who has been studying beavers for more than 20 years. They will build a lodge with just about anything, she said.
But while they have the construction skills, the animals are lacking in the technical department.
“I’m not sure if they could directionally install it in a way that they’d get a good shot of Downton Abbey,” she said. “But otherwise, they could install it, but it would probably be covered in mud.”
Thankfully, they have a Glynnis on hand to set them straight.
It seems, Hood said, that in places like Thunder Bay, along the outskirts of the Canadian wilderness, placing items such as satellite dishes and Canadian flags on beaver lodges has become the quintessential prank for Canadian humans.
“I think that Canadians have this profound connection to beavers,” she said.
“It’s our national symbol. And beaver lodges are just such a great obvious structure on the landscape that installing satellite dishes on the top or Canada flags on the top just seems to go well with the Canadian identity.”
Isn’t that funny? A beaver lodge with a satellite dish? Imagine what great reception they get in there. And from the beavers point of view its probably not like they’re littering. You just watch because that dish is going to show up in a dam someday soon.
CBC attempted to locate the alleged pranksters responsible for the Thunder Bay installation on social media.For two days, people responded with little more than jokes.
“Dam! Those beavers have better TV than me,” one said.
“I bet they’re watching Leave it to Beaver,” said another.
“They got their building materials at Beaver Lumber,” yet another chimed in.
But then there was a breakthrough in the search.
HILARIOUS! Those whacky canadians.
Grant Carlson, a resident of Onion Lake Damn Road reported that, on May 25, he took a kayak and chest waders out into the pond and screwed the satellite dish onto the beaver lodge.
“I run a wedding centre, and you know, I was getting pretty depressed with all my weddings being cancelled,” Carlson explained.
“I just thought that maybe I could help somebody else out, and we decided to help the beavers. You know self-isolation isn’t so bad with Netflix.”
You always knew it. Wedding planners were up to no good. Think of all the mischief they can get into when they have nothing to keep them busy!
