If you had a younger sibling as a child, there was plenty to resent them for. They were cuter and got more presents and didn’t have to go to school or do as many chores as you. But all that youth and innocence had its advantages too. Life came with a built-in escape route. As long as you never overplayed your hand you could always blame the crayon on the kitchen floor or the mess in the hallway on your younger brother or sister. And sometimes this worked well enough to get you out of the jam for a while.
For much of public works beavers play this role too.
Stuff city crews and storm engineers are supposed to do routinely often pass unnoticed. Like monitor the sewers of clean out debris. When they are called on the carpet or there’s a problem they invariably point to the rodent. “It was the beavers” they say. And because the city mangers and mayors of the world apparently believe any wild lie they can possibly hear about the animals they are off the hook. And sometimes it’s entirely bunk and sometimes beavers were dimly involved in making a problem worse that if they were doing their jobs would have been fixed long ago.
But it’s always the beavers.
In Rocklin right now the beavers at Monte Verde are being blamed for tunneling into the levy. Which may or may not have actually occurred. The levy needs repairing and because of this all the water must be taken away, the fish must be captured and rehomed, the nesting pond turtles relocated. Crews and bulldozers ripped out the beaver dam to take the water away and are currently assuming that ripping out all the trees and cattails means that beavers never come back.
Our poor friend watching over them is spending every day in utter horror observing the torment and hoping that the beavers themselves are spared. She sent a photo this morning. On the right you can see what the entire lovely dam used to look like On the left is evidence of their savagery.
You can imagine what a silty muddy mess the water is downstream. And how the evicted birds are flying around and around looking for the trees where they used to perch. CDFW gave permission for this atrocity, and my that must make them very proud.
All we can say is that we’ve been there and we share your pain, Laurie.
Now here’s something pleasant to improve your mood after all that. Sometimes it turns out experts get it right.
