I was held hostage by a beaver
It was the moment of the big release! And then nothing happened. I opened the cage door expecting a frantic flurry and all I got was the feeling that I just acquired a new pet. While the three of us sat side by side on a knoll overlooking rolling farmland and a winding river, I felt a rare serenity.
This is a fun article. I like almost everything about it. She explains that at the time she was living on a 60 acre fish hatchery in Quebec. (That made me think of the Methow Project.) (Of course the irony is that if more people tolerated beavers Quebec wouldn’t need a fish hatchery in the first place.) The good-hearted writer was bothered by a beaver whose dams threatened to flood her home, so after months of painstakingly removing them by hand (only to have them instantly rebuilt) she decided to call in a trapper. The trapper promised to live trap the beaver and take it to someplace wonderful, but the night before he came she realized that might be the afterlife.
She woke up early and emptied the trap herself.
We paid big bucks for the assurance that the little guy would be safely trapped and transported in a cage to a “beaver heaven.” But that morning I had the sinking feeling that the “heaven” in question would be the biblical kind. Disguising myself with a baseball cap and a man’s jacket (I knew the neighbours would not approve of my impending actions), I hauled out the wheelbarrow. I summoned a strength I didn’t know that my skinny arms had in order to lift the heavy cage, complete with the captured critter, onto the wheelbarrow. After covering the cage with a blanket, Gypsy and I set off with our charge along a dirt road to find a release spot.
I had always thought that there were two kinds of people in the world. The kind who were sensitive and caring about all that was vulnerable, and the kind who were not.
She uses the incident to comment on moral relativity in human responses to animals, and show how compassion is always a little expensive. True, but I can’t help but wish that rather than spend time musing on the moral lessons of her past she had used the Google to find information about beaver management. Relocating one beaver is not likely to solve her problem, but a properly installed flow device would.
The irony of course is that even though she is working so hard to take care of this beaver, relocating him with no family members in a strange land is likely terminal anyway. Not to mention she probably has a family of beavers on her property, so she won’t have solved her problem OR saved his life.
I dispatched this to the Globe and Mail, let’s hope if they don’t print it they at least send it to her for next time!
Almost the Right Answer
Ms. McQueston’s lovely article communicated a thoughtful regard for wildlife and I wish I was lucky enough to be her neighbor. I would have told her about the use of proven, inexpensive flow devices that can safely control pond height and prevent her home from flooding. Maybe I would have explained over coffee that beavers are a keystone species and create habitat for birds, fish and wildlife that she can enjoy for years to come. Over the back fence I could have told her how the dams raise the water table, prevent drought and improve water quality. Later when we were alone I could explain how very unlikely it is that all her problems were caused by a single beaver, and that the remaining family is likely expecting new kits in the summer. I would pat her hand and say this was a noble effort but since beavers are highly social animals (and very territorial!) relocating a single family member is usually a prolonged death sentence.
Since we’re sadly not neighbors I can only hope that she reads this and continues to look for better solutions next time.
