Baby animals are cute. Tiny kittens, fuzzy rats, baby wombats. Lets face it: baby everything’s are cuter than what they eventually grow up to be. We were cuter when we were babies. Baby animals are cute even if the adults versions are scary or scaly or carnivorous. It may be in the evolutionary best interest of baby animals to be cute so that their parents want to see them and take care of them – and that if their parents get lost or killed we agree to take over! I’m prepared for the ubiquitous “awwww” factor when viewing baby animals. This ain’t my first rodeo and I’ve been around the baby animal block a few times before.
But this is different.
No bunnies or puppies could prepare a person for this image. Take a moment to look at that startled face, curled tail, the webbed toes , and those little fingers clutching her hand. This is a baby beaver, called a kit and recently donated with her two sisters to the Chehaw Wildlife Center by the good folks at DNS (who probably killed her family). The article says they were found when the ‘dam’ they were living in was destroyed, so clearly we’re dealing sophisticated beaver minds.
I’m saying “her” because of their names, Molly, June and Penny, but there’s actually no telling if they knew enough to check the gender before they slapped the names on them. They clearly didn’t know anything about their development because this article says they’re “6-8 weeks old” – which unless they’ve been starved for 4 of those weeks, is absolutely impossible. I would be very surprised if they were more than 2 weeks old, and looking at how wet they are in the next two photos it is clear that they aren’t producing (or using) their own castoreum and no one at the ‘education center’ is waterproofing them or drying them off in the mean time.
Two of the kits will remain in their care to be used in educational programs – which, if the caretakers come to realize that these are babies and need to nurse for 6 more weeks and be treated with waterproofing or at least dried off with a cozy towel then they might live long enough to help. Certainly Georgia needs education about the role beavers play in the ecosystem and their importance for rivers and streams. Georgia is the state where the Clemson Pond Leveler was invented lo these many years ago, and certainly has a few folks who know a thing or two about beavers. But its also a state where they paid a bounty for tails and encouraged folks to keep them in their freezer until officials could get around to paying for the deaths. So it’s safe to say they need some education.
No word yet on the fate of third kit, and that’s a little creepy in itself. I will write them with some information and hope for the best.
UPDATE: Good News from the Responsible Folks at Chehaw….
Thank you for your resources! I know our Education Coordinator, Jackie, has been in contact with several zoos and rehabilitation centers (including your own) trying to make sure our beavers receive the best possible care! As an AZA accredited Zoo, they have received both expert veterinary and daily care. They will indeed play an important role in educating the public about ways to coexist with beavers and other native animals. I will make sure Jackie receives these links.
We received the beavers over four weeks ago and were told they were about 2-3 weeks old at that time. Before deciding to acquire the beavers, we carefully considered their husbandry needs as both kits and adults. While I cannot attest for their care before they arrived, I can assure you that all of their needs are now being met. They are being bottle fed around the clock with rehab-recommended formula (from the care sheet on your website). Their bottle feeding schedule and implementation of solid foods was researched through a number of different zoos and rehab facilities. They have even begun to eat solids including Mazuri Rodent Pellets, carrots, and apples. The current temperature here in southwest Georgia is about 80 degrees during the day, and after each swim, I can assure you they are thoroughly towel dried. They are regularly checked by our staff veterinarians and have been accurately sexed as female. As for the third kit, she will find a wonderful home at another zoo with a colony of beavers. Hopefully all three will help educate people about living with beavers.
Feel free to call us if you would like to further discuss the care of our beavers. I will leave you with the contact information of our Education Coordinator. Thanks for your care and concern!
Not to be accused of regional bias, LK offers this local example of beaver misinformation in yesterdays SF Gate photo identification contest, in which we are assured the photo is of a beaver “Swimming on its back”
To which I can only reply that this is a ‘beaver’ in much the same way as the Iraq war was an excellent use of American resources and after 5 years of publishing articles on the Martinez Beavers the SF Gate should know better!
And some really good news comes from Oregon where Jimmy Taylor (perhaps the one of two folks at the USDA with a favorable impression of beavers) will be presenting on thursday about beavers at the Alsea Watershed Alliance in his two hour talk titled “Understanding beavers here in the Beaver state.”
And this final note from Guelph where the mayor wrote me back and assured me she had lead volunteer groups to wrap trees in the past and would continue to do so in the future! Nice to be published in Canada!
