There’s some mighty beaver-stupid to talk about today, but I promise to reward you afterwards with something adorable from this morning’s visit. I promise it will be worth it. First the heavy lifting:
Beaver bounty hunter: “tail” it to the jury
He’s a bounty hunter, make no mistake about it. Johnny Vead does not look like Steve McQueen from the old television Western, nor does he look like Dog, the mullet-wearing “brah” of more recent TV fame.
But he is a bounty hunter. Vead doesn’t chase bail jumpers — he chases tail thumpers. Beavers, that is. Brown gold. Symbol of industriousness, determination, good dental hygiene — and Canada. Builder of dams and flooder of fields. The pudgy, flat-tailed, buck-toothed web-footed “water rat” has made it to the top of the Police Jury’s most-wanted list. Since signing on as the Police Jury’s hit man for beavers, Vead has been bringing in a few tails a day. Not enough to put a dent in the “dam” things, but at least he’s gnawing away at their numbers. Should one of his captives protest his innocence, Vead will probably just tell him, “tail it to the jury — the police jury.” (Sorry, I promise that was the last beaver-related pun.) The Police Jury pays Vead $40 per tail. That is all they want or care about. The pelt, the meat and everything else is Vead’s to do with as he wishes.
The police jury is a Lord-of-the-Flies-type legislative and executive body unique to many of Louisiana’s parishes. Avoyelles is about smack dab in the middle of the state, and this parish has made the decision to handle their beaver problems by paying a trapper $40.00 a tail. Apparently the reporter is so excited by his own bounty hunter analogy that he couldn’t be bothered to use paragraphs. Or maybe they’re just outlawed in Louisiana?
Forty dollars a tail.
Since the research reports an average of 5 beavers to a colony that’s 200.00 dollars to get rid of a single family of beavers. For a year. Then another 200.00 to get rid of them again. Not to mention all the fish and ducks they’re going to lose every time they pay resident tax dollars to ruin their creek. A smart person would point out that they could easily take that money and buy parts for a flow device to fix the problem once and for all, and end up with savings for school lunches or senior programs.
At least they’re wasting their money on an expert:,
“Beavers have it made,” Vead said. “They don’t have to go to work, pay bills, go shopping, pay taxes. They don’t have television, computers or telephones. All they have to do is eat and make baby beavers,” he said with hearty laugh.
Yes everyone knows how lazy beavers are. Never doing any work at all. Sitting on their couches and eating chocolate covered willow leaves. Counting off the days until that 364th one comes and the females enter estrus so they can hurry and make babies. Beavers are so lazy. That must be we have that saying,
“Lazy as a beaver”.
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And now the reward. This is footage from the primary dam this morning. I was happy to see the ducks were back. We saw a female with a new clutch of just-hatched ducklings at the secondary dam on Wednesday. Seven! (Four yellow and three brown.) They were so small they looked like beatles, swimming around excitedly. I waited anxiously to see how they’d do. You know how it is with baby ducks. First you count 7, and then you count 5, and then there are three. It’s a dangerous world out there. We saw them again this morning, bigger – more like hamsters now. Check out the view from this morning and count for yourself.
