Beaver Rescue

Dallin had an after school field trip today that ended at 4:30 so I was pulling up to Richard Secord School at about 4:20 when I saw an ETS bus pulled over on the side of the street. Now, that wouldn't have been any thing out of the ordinary, except that the bus driver was out on the side walk looking down at the ground and walking rather slowly. As I got closer I could see that their was a small, fury, brown, something waddling along beside him. My first thought was "it's a ferret" ick, I don't like ferrets, but as I took a closer look I saw the undeniably distinct tail of yes, you guessed it, our National Animal... A BEAVER!!

No, The bus driver hadn't lost his dear pet, "Bucky" had wandered off on his own for an afternoon stroll along the river bank and obviously took a few wrong turns! When I came across him he was looking pretty rough and in need of a serious bath.(maybe even and animal emergency room) The bus driver informed me that someone had called our local Fish and WildLife division and they had said that that our dear little friend "Bucky" would need to be taken to Elerslie Animal Rescue something or other and that he of course couldn't do that. He asked me if I had anything in my truck that we could put him into so I opened up the back of the Yukon to see if I might have a Costco box or something useful kicking around. Their to my utter delight was Harley's kennel!

This is when the real fun began and I so wish that my phone had been charged so I could have captured the real rescue! Myself, and at one given moment at least 7 other people were trying desperately to get this poor little creature into the 'cage"! He wasn't very impressed and kept us busy for over 20 minutes. We were now in a school field surrounded by chain link fence and so I had the brainy idea that if we kept walking with him until we got over to the fence we could corner him and force him into the kennel.

It worked, we got him in and by this time it was just me and two other people everyone else was standing back in the parking lot watching us chase a baby beaver around the field! Our audience had grown over the 30 minutes that had past and everyone was excitedly taking pictures and calling for their kids to come take a look. In the meantime another bystander came up to me and said she was the one that had called Fish and Wild life and handed me the number and said "Good Luck" I called and they said to take it home and they would come by and pick it up. I was really glad I got to go home with it so I could take these pictures before the officer showed up.

So about 45 minutes later a Fish and Wildlife officer pulls up to the driveway, we tried to get Bucky into his cage but the poor little guy had had enough and backed right up and wasn't going to get out. The officer asked if he could just take my kennel and return it later (it's still not here at 8:30) of course I said "No problem" he asked where I had found the beaver and wanted me to point it out on his map because he said they would check him over and see if he was all good and then try to find his den? ( I can't remember what he called it, but his home) and more importantly his family and return him to them! Ahhhh! isn't that I sweet ending to my little adventure!

We all thought he was very cute!

He was very tired and kept trying to close his little eyes.

We were all a bit grossed out by his very yellow teeth!

another tooth shot

The kids and Bucky!

Maryn and Aunt Julie would be so proud of me for taking care of "Nature"! The officer thanked me for being a good citizen and I smiled and waved goodbye. All is well that ends well (as long as he returns my dog kennel!!!!)