What luck! Since today is kind of a big deal the universe has rewarded me by giving me two wonderful stories to use my my sarcasm skills amocking. Such a treat! By now I’m sure you know me so well I hardly need to say the withering and belittling comments that spring to mind with these stories, but humor me anyway.
Verdun going forward with pilot project to control beaver population
Last spring, the borough approved a pilot project to trap and sterilize beavers that are chewing up the greenery. Now, as summer ends and mothers are feeding their young, the final phase is set to be carried out. “The last step is supposed to be trapping these beavers, then taking them to the Biodome and sterilizing them,” said city councillor Sterling Downey.
That’s right. The brilliant minds of Verdun Montreal have decided that rather the wrap the trees or plant willow on their precious island, every beaver, including the kits, will be live trapped and STERILIZED before being re-released. And then, assuming they live, the family is expected to reassemble and stay in the area to keep others away with their territorial behaviors. And Verdun will be famous for their forward-thinking strategy!
We read about Verdun in 2014, and you can bet I wrote them letters translated into french describing what they should actually do to deal with the problem. They liked THIS solution better. Now the news story says this is the brainchild of the Montreal SPCA, but our friends at Furbearer Defenders aren’t so sure. They think the SPCA said don’t kill them and the city said ‘Okay, we’ll sterilize them’. But I’m thinking the SPCA bears some responsibility anyway, because cities are always coming up with deeply stupid ideas to manage beavers and it’s the protectors job to protect.
And honestly, I remember the Human Society filling my head full of a lot of garbage about immunocontraception being a solution to population explosion way back when our beavers were threatened, instead of sitting me down and calmly explaining that the kits would disperse and go find their own territories when they grew up. And that populations DIDN’T EXPLODE.
I wrote the same on the news story and one of the councilors wrote back that they had to take such desperate measures because ‘beavers didn’t belong on the island’ and they needed to keep more from coming. I explained that they better move the island away from the water then because that would never happen when dispersers would always swim by on their way from point A to point B and have a snack.
This story makes me feel like flying to Montreal and replacing the entire city council’s viagra prescriptions with bromide. I hate them for trying this because I know for a fact no one in the country has regularly done this surgery on a beaver with success. I figure the SPCA is happy to describe it as a ‘victory’ and the city council thinks it’s a ‘win-win’ for them, because if it works it controls the population, and if they die who cares?
On a lighter note we were introduced yesterday to a prehistoric fish eating beaver with its own Jurassic Park CGI. You’ll want to watch this twice.
Pursuit of a fish puts a beaver from the dino days in harm’s way in this recreation of a world long gone.
The Castorocauda was known as the “Jurassic beaver.” It must have felt skittish moment to moment and day to day, surrounded as it was by much larger animals that would like to eat it. Here, we see out little hero pursue a fish and in the process run right into a pair of hungry dinosaurs that think about the beaver what the beaver thought about the fish: “Snack!”
Now before we entirely burst into hysterics that the beaver was chasing a fish, wikipedia advises that the Castorcaudal is an example of the Docodonta which is a wholly extinct group of mammal-like aquatic animals. That did have incisors and did eat fish. Wholly extinct means its not a beaver ancestor, but whatever I guess.
It’s Discovery!
Beavers on the big screen in Vallejo tonight, and then I’m officially DONE with every single commitment. We drove by the mighty fancy looking theater last night and I was able to get really nervous, which was a special accomplishment that doesn’t happen every day. If you’re free tonight come support beavers!
