Looks like yesterday’s review helped Ben Golfarb’s book a bit on the old Amazon-meter, which is excellent for beavers. I also learned that he will be interviewed on National Geographic Books in July, now we just need him to get some June gigs so we can promote the festival a bit!
In the meantime there’s plenty to keep our attention. Starting with something I never thought I’d see: A watch-out-for-beavers-in-traffic report from Tulsa Oklahoma.
Of course beavers are notoriously low to the ground and dispersers are extremely prone to getting hit by cars, but I’ve never ever seen articles warning about this, and I certainly never expected one from Oklahoma, where they hate beavers so much they go out of their way to kill them whenever they can.
Not that this article is exactly kind towards them either…
Why a beaver crosses the road, and other car-thumping wonders of spring
While driving along local roadways this time of year, it’s not uncommon to see a brown furry animal walking near the road, possibly lying on it or off to the side, preferably not running in front of your headlights.
You might wonder about these animals normally seen in or near the water and ask, “Why did a beaver cross a road?”Answer: Because it just couldn’t stick around any longer.
Terry Ball, director of streets and stormwater for city of Tulsa, knows about beavers dispersing and building new homes. It picks up in the spring, but keeping tabs on beaver construction is actually a year-round chore, he said.
“The creeks are the biggest issue,” he said. “They can dam up a creek pretty quickly, and it can flood a neighborhood.”
Flood-control ponds are another issue.“On a retention pond they might change how it flows, and we don’t want them to do anything to change how that pond is supposed to work,” Ball said.
Beavers live in colonies, but as it comes time for a new batch of young ones, the older 2- and 3-year-olds in the group take the hint and hit the road, and sometimes they get hit on the road instead.
Huh, that’s actually true, although if I ever get a beaver publicist alone in a room I’m going to demand to know why on EARTH anyone first said that beaver live in “Colonies”. That makes it sound like hundreds grouped together. Like penquins on the shores of Antartica. When of course we all know that the word colony when applied to beavers just means FAMILY, which is a helluva lot less scary sounding.
Anyway, its Oklahoma so trust them to make beavers sound pretty bad.
Older, larger beavers sometimes get displaced by construction or flood events and may be on the move as well as the younger ones. If you come across a big adult, you best hit the brakes. “We had someone that reported harvesting a 69-pound beaver caught this year,” Davis said. “That’s a big, dominant critter.”
New cars aren’t built for hitting those critters, he said.
“Any of the new cars sit so low to the ground — anything you hit, it’s rolling up under there and tearing that plastic up. … That’s just the way cars are constructed these days.”
“Especially the smaller new vehicles, they’ll damage the car or cause a bigger accident,” Murray said. “They’re stout — nothing but muscle. It’d be like hitting a fuzzy concrete block.”
Huh?
He’s right about one thing. Beavers are LOW to the ground. I’ve often thought of that beavers need those tall flags that we used to put on the back of kids bicycles when I was younger, just to make them really obvious in traffic,
And I’m sure beavers are quite flattered to hear that he thinks they’re nothing but muscle. They take so much teasing at the gym for that classic waddle and stored fat to live off in snowy winters.
“But, hey,” they’ll say now, “it’s all solid muscle!”
