Okay. Call your cat over. We need her for this column. Make it sound interesting and click your tongue a few times. Is she there? Great, now once she’s in petting distance reach out to stroke her – not that way – pet from the base of her tail all the way up to the top of her head. If you do it right she should look like a hair-volume product commercial.
Perfect. Now you know just how I feel about this article from Colorado. It’s not horrible or malicious. And it’s certainly not the worst thing I’ve ever read about beavers. But it’s jaunty tone and timbre, from the first word to the last sentence, definitely rub me the wrong way.
Those dam allergies
Our discussion today will focus on Ginger Beaver and Duncan Beaver, the pair of sharp-toothed, gnawing rodents that live at our Cheyenne Mountain Zoo. (Yes, we’re back at the zoo again, where my wife is a member of the board of directors. But unlike in last week’s column, we’ll be talking here about creatures that have evolved over time.)
Anyway, these are no ordinary beavers. Their story is quite remarkable. Both beavers are allergic to trees. I am not kidding.
And so it begins. Already I’m asking, perhaps Ginger and Duncan are allergic to ZOOs, did you ever consider that?
Ginger is a 4-year-old, and her partner Duncan is 5. They have, however, been spayed and neutered and are partners only on the surface.
To tell us the story of these special animals we bring in staff veterinarian Dr. Eric Klaphake, a lucky guy who gets to spend a few hours each day cavorting with beavers. The problem began in April, the veterinarian says, with each beaver scratching at its underbelly fur with front and back paws and even with their teeth.
“Then Duncan developed breathing problems,” Klaphake says. “Rodents only breathe through their noses, never through their mouths. So for a beaver, a stuffy nose is a much bigger issue than it is for other animals. Eventually, Duncan even began sneezing and wheezing.”
And I think I speak for all zoo visitors when I say this: No one wants to see a sneezing or wheezing beaver.
It got worse: “They began to lose hair on their bellies,” Klaphake says. “They were uncomfortable and irritable. Beavers are nocturnal, normally only active at night, but they began wandering around all day, not sleeping.”
Ugh. Miserable trapped beavers unable to get comfortable, roaming a noisy zoo all day.
Soon, the zoo had some exhausted beavers. Something had to be done. Testing ruled out hormone imbalance, infection and hyperthyroid issues. Then a skin test hinted at allergies. A veterinary allergist made it definitive.
“Ginger has wood allergies. She is allergic to several trees including birch, alder, black walnut and hackberry,” Klaphake says. “Duncan is allergic to cottonwood, alder and elm. He’s also allergic to ragweed and mold. Ginger is allergic to grasses, goldenrod and firebush.”
Good lord, I hate this story. Allergic to the thing they eat, and work with and live in? This is a second “Silent Spring” and deserves a grim dirge, not a peppy paragraph! A beaver allergic to cottonwood is one unhappy beaver. I suppose if he was in the wild he could just walk past the tree that itched and gnaw on something else instead. But since he’s in prison he has to eat what he’s fed, or not eat at all. We won’t even mention why they’re being exposed to MOLD in a zoo that’s supposed to be maintained. And what’s up with allergy tests? Have you ever known anyone who went for an allergy test or brought their pet for one that came back with GOOD news?
Me neither.
Anyway, the initial solution was, just like with humans and even some dogs and cats, regular anti-allergy injections. Here once again is Klaphake:
“The challenge with beavers is that they can be pretty unfun to be around when they are irritable,” he says, although most of us probably already knew that. “They are among the largest of the rodents — Ginger weighs 60 pounds and Duncan is about 50 pounds — and they have those big front teeth, and when you make them unhappy they come at you pretty quickly.”
I’m sure you don’t want those beaver to “go Bellarus” on you. No wonder you sound worried. Hey, I have a solution. Neither beaver is allergic to willow. So why not stop feeding whatever happens to be on your way to work and just give them what they can tolerate! Then take down any cottonwood or Alder that is upwind or nearby in the zoo, okay? Or you know, you could keep injecting them pointlessly and see if they get better.
Eventually they stopped giving them injections and adapted oral measures instead, like sneaking medicine into a sweet potato. Which happened to work a lot better.
They’ve stopped scratching, their belly hair has grown back, and they are back to their nocturnal lifestyle.
Since those beavers were 4 and 5 before your noticed this problem, I wonder if something might have triggered their reaction? A new cleaning compound you’re using? Or the zookeepers new perfume? I wonder if having surgery might have kick-started those allergies? Maybe the chemical you used to put them to sleep for the operation? Or the pellets you fed them when they were healing? Come to think of it, maybe it’s windborn exposure to the gallons of roundup they use at the three adjacent golf courses nearby?
Hate. Beavers. In. Zoos.
