Brace yourself. This story will make your stomach lurch, your eyes well and your fists clench. Remember the Stittsville beavers that had the misfortune to settle in a storm pond in a suburb outside Ottawa? The city wanted them dead and then Anita Utas got some friends and made some fuss and got them to back down. The Mayor even posed with the giant stuffed beaver they had at a protest. The media went away, Anita got to keep her beavers, and everyone was happy.

Then last month, without notifying anyone who actually cared, the city sent in some ‘experts’ to rip out the lodge during the national holiday long weekend. They said it would ‘discourage the beavers from living there’. They swore there were no kits and all the beavers all got away safely. They said we know beavers do good things some places but not in storm ponds and flow devices can’t possibly work here, so we have to move them out.

So here’s what Anita filmed (press release here) in the pond where there are no kits and the beavers would move along.

For those of you who’ve never seen our beaver kits, believe me when I say these are tiny. When kits are born they are so fat and floaty that they are great swimmers, but they can’t dive without adult assistance. That works like a kind of natural childcare because they can’t get OUT of the lodge (or back into the lodge) unless an older beaver helps them through the plunge hole.

But thanks to the mayor the Stittsville beavers have no lodge. So they are out out way before they’re ready. And worse than this, they have no safe place to sleep in the day, and Anita took this photo of mom beaver sleeping with her kits off the path in the bushes. Dad hasn’t been seen since the destruction, and maybe he’s alive and looking for new territory to move the family to, but with the drought in the region there aren’t many ideal waterways nearby.

Mind you this isn’t out in some clearing in the middle of a forest. This is outside some townhouses in a subdivision and people walk their dogs on the trail every day. These beavers need triage, stat. You can’t relocate them yet because the male may come back. Mom can’t build a new lodge even if you hadn’t made everyone wrap the trees because she’s BUSY full time at the moment. And the kits are way, way, way too young to be of any help whatsoever.

What they need is a prefab lodge to make up for the destroyed home, that can keep them safe, give them some protection from dogs, (and keep dogs safe from them) and let the kits get bigger while you wait and see if Dad makes it back. If you MUST relocate,  in about a month bring in Sherri Tippie and move the family to safer ground, and then sit down with Anita Utas and Donna Dubreuil and work out a plan to never…ever…ever do this again as a city. Send your protests and persuasions here: Jim.Watson@ottawa.ca; shad.qadri@ottawa.ca;Nick.Stow@ottawa.ca

And mean it!

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Now if you need a better kit story to get that Stittsville taste out of your mouth, you might read this where some 4-H moms and their kids rescued a couple orphaned beavers

Orphaned beavers rescued

KEESEVILLE — Kerri Lamarche heard something strange one evening when she took her children to play at a small pond near their house.

“It sounded like a newborn baby crying,” she said.  It turned out to be to be two beaver kits.

NOT EVERY DAY’

The children won’t soon forget the experience.  “It was fun,” Kylie said.  “It’s not every day you get to save a beaver,” Kylie said.

“I have something to remember it for,” Tanner said.  He brought the small log that one of the beavers had chewed on to school to show his class.

Tanner loves animals and seems to have a knack for caring for animals other than beavers, too. He won first place in novice showmanship at the Clinton County Fair for his handling of the Lamarches’ Silky chicken Fuzzy.

Kerri and Samantha lead their children’s 4-H Club, Keeseville Cozy Creatures, and on Aug. 17, the seven-member group will make a trip to the refuge center and present it with a donation they are now collecting.

“They’ve got their whole group interested in these beavers,” Kerri said.