Maybe it’s the week I’ve had but I’m having zero empathy with the fancy international art gallery upset that beavers are ruining all their aspen. Maybe you’ll see it differently.

Experts called in to handle gnawing issue

John Kinkade and daughter Alyson, owners of Columbine Gallery at 2683 N. Taft Ave., are seeing a recurrence of a beaver problem that first plagued aspen trees at the gallery in June 2001. Back then, a group of beavers from the little Lake Tern next to the gallery took down 35 trees in the sculpture garden area before John hired a company from Boulder to assist with the problem. This time, a beaver has caused one tree to fall and gnawed almost all the way through a second tree.

“In 2001, we would hear the beavers in the pond. They would flap their tails in the water and we thought that was fun until all of a sudden trees started falling all around us,” John said. “We lost 35 trees. They were coming into the interior of the sculpture garden, so we lost one group of aspens that had seven trees in it with 8-10-inch diameters.”

He said the Boulder company did not manage to trap any beavers, but the beavers were seemingly scared away, since they didn’t return to the area for a long time.

This time, one beaver has built a lodge at the base of the sculpture garden in Lake Tern, and the family is seeing the evidence of beaver destruction in the aspen trees again.

There is also a goose that has nested outside John’s window and he joked, “We specialize in wildlife sculpture and real wildlife as well.”

The Columbine Gallery consists of the kind of artISTE expert advice that will help you find a painting that matches your sofa, or commission a sculpture for that perfect garden nook. They certainly are not the rough and tumble gaggle of art workshops and new showings that our own artist FRO Butler maintains in Art Cottage. They are more like this:

They’re about 50 minutes away from Sherri Tippie but something tells me they never invited her to consult on their problem.There’s not a single mention in the article about wrapping trees or painting with sand. They probably didn’t see her in the documentary either. Because they were busy dying grout green to match the mosaic in the patio. This is the way they like to see their Aspen trees.