How’d you enjoy Lassie? Ohh me too. I especially enjoyed hearing from all the beaver experts out there that never saw it and yet remembered growing up watching the show! Lory wisely wondered what he’ll do when new beavers move in,and Bruce said he didn’t remember Timmy’s dad being such a conservationist! We all thought it was crazy to try and rip apart a beaver dam by standing right below it!

Yikes! A new meaning to the phrase “Timmy’s down the well“!

I thought about those three bailey traps full of beavers and wondered just what in the heck fish and game was going to do with them! Lassie supposedly took place in a fictional midwest place called “Calverton”. So I’m guessing those fictional fish and game folk would know.

Unfortunately the not-so-fictional town of McKinney Texas had other plans. In general the strategy in the Lone Star State appears to be kill them outright if no ones watching, but if a community objects then just pick them up and move them one by one to some beaver dumping ground. Sometimes lots of families of beavers wind up in the same cell, so you can imagine how well that works out.

City of McKinney relocates beavers after dams cause flooding at Bonnie Wenk Park

The beaver dams first started causing problems when the city began renovating the north side of Bonnie Wenk Park in fall 2018. After a few months without issues, the beavers started causing problems again in June, McKinney Animal Control Supervisor De St. Aubin said in an email to Community Impact Newspaper.

“[The beavers] have always been out there, but our interactions didn’t start until we started working on the area that comprises Phase II,” Michael Kowski, director of the McKinney Parks and Recreation Department, said in an email.

In late February, McKinney Animal Control started trapping and relocating the beavers to private land outside of McKinney. At the same time, the parks department placed pipes around the dams to reroute water away from the dams. According to Kowski, the pipes are working.

The city has relocated six beavers as of July 25, St. Aubin said in an email, and they are starting to trap again. St. Aubin said he is certain animal control could never catch them all.

You know how it is. Beavers are like termites. It’s not like there’s a SINGLE FAMILY living together and we’re kidnapping members one by one. And since we started in February it’s not like we left the pregnant mother alone to fend for herself with the kits. I mean we wouldn’t think of it that way anyhow.

Let me know if you can read this paragraph without making a gesture. Because I sure failed.

“As we continue to weave parks into our beautiful landscape, we accept that we must respect and work with the rhythm and behaviors of our local wildlife,” Kowski said in the email. “Beaver dams will always be a part of our parks system. And our skilled maintenance team is up to dealing with any challenges associated with their presence.”

I’m not sure which part of that monologue is the most outrageous. Referring to maintenance as a SKILLED TEAM or the fact that you used the word “Rhythm” in a sentence about local wildlife.

You should have that entire phrase sewn into a hat.

I’m hoping you can explain to me why someone would relocate beavers AND install a pipe at the dam? Do you think the dam will fix itself? Or do you think possibly that NEITHER IDEA WILL WORK and so you do both in the vain hopes that something will help the situation.

Good lord. Remind me never to visit McKinney.

Here’s something wise from Ellen Wohl’s new book that speaks to the situation.