My parents called me about this exciting report Monday night. Seems the a woman in Elk Grove saw a beaver in her neighbor’s backyard! Mind you, the kind of neighbor with a stepladder to look over her back fence saw the beaver in the house next door and is worried about her safety – (so worried apparently she called the news station instead of actually going next door). The ‘beaver’ sleeps in a pile of grass all day and nibbles on her trees. It leaves droppings on their patio and it’s the ‘biggest beaver she ever saw’.
Here’s what it sounds like in Heidi’s brain when we hear a story like that. Of course, there’s the usual WTF chorus, then a scouring of the video provided. (you see no beaver tail is visible). Then a reminder that beaver droppings are sawdust and underwater and nutria droppings look more like they’re from big hamsters. Then a quick google search to see if nutria are in the Sacramento Valley. (They are.) Then the time-honored question what are the odds that a beaver would be sleeping on a back porch in the open and allowing himself to b e filmed in the day time? And finally, “It’s the biggest beaver I’ve ever seen!” Really? I just have to ask, then. How many beavers have you actually seen, Nicole?
And since the camera can’t show us the tail, I just have to ask, did the droppings you saw look like this, or this?
Well, if for some bizarre reason this is a sick or insane juvenile beaver living in a backyard (and I’ll eat a bug if it is) then it nicely proves what we all warned them about back in 2007: The Elk Grove Beaver Massacre produced an unbelievable population rebound and will cost the city more money in the long run. It should never, ever, have happened.
Is Elk Grove in the news for anything else besides beavers? Anything?
