"I couldn't possibly fail to disagree with you less."
25 November 2005Warding off the beaverApparently you can't. As part of the There is no money in the tree budget to replace the two dozen or so trees that have had close encounters with teeth, but there is also no money elsewhere in the budget to stamp out the little flat-tailed SOBs, and there's not much enthusiasm in the city government for taking them on. Apart from the cost, picking on poor innocent gnawing critters makes for bad press, and anyway, it's not like this was an unpredictable event: young beavers migrate once they reach adulthood, and hello, here's a whole new ecosystem to play with. So the beavers will be left alone, and that's fine with me; it will take them a long time to finish off seven thousand trees. (Minor changes after first publication: see Comments.) Update, 10 pm: TV news coverage, albeit with little bite. Posted at 9:36 AM to City SceneDude, I think you want to use the verb "gnawed" instead of "beaverized," unless you want a bunch of search engine traffic looking for pages you really don't have. You don't want to know what search engine traffic I get for this article on civil liberties... Posted by: Matt at 11:54 AM on 25 November 2005I get tons of inexplicable search traffic already, but I'll pencil in a change just the same, mostly because I don't want to see the context. :) Gosh, how much do two dozen trees and some (humane) beaver traps cost? $20k tops? Surely there's a can-do city worker who can fix this. There are a lot of smart people 'round these parts, I reckon. Posted by: Dan at 1:07 PM on 25 November 2005Given the migratory patterns of the creatures, I suspect that this will peak next year and then trail off a bit. I would suggest the introduction of natural predators — "drunken fratboys in a motorboat" was my first thought — but some might construe this as flippancy. Posted by: CGHill at 1:14 PM on 25 November 2005Are beavers on the endangered species list? If not, why not just declare beaver season open, and auction off a 'license to kill' to the highest n bidders, where n is the number of beavers to be disposed of. Even if their fur were worthless (it's not) and their meat inedible (it's quite tasty), there must be a fair number of hunters out there who have already shot 14 different kinds of animals and would like to make it 15. In short, it shouldn't cost the state anything at all to get rid of the beavers, since the administrative costs can surely be covered by license fees -- not to mention the savings of not having to worry about the damned (and damming!) things anymore. Posted by: Dr. Weevil at 4:26 PM on 25 November 2005Geez. Now I'm going to get search traffic for "beaver shooting." Still, it sounds like a reasonable way to curb the population should it get out of hand, though even in Oklahoma there are going to be some people grousing, so to speak, about all these horrid guns so close to downtown. I had exactly same thought - and I'd like to obtain a contact number to get me one of those. Posted by: Tatyana at 6:34 PM on 25 November 2005You wouldn't believe it. Posted by: Tatyana at 9:26 PM on 25 November 2005Well, supply and demand, as the wise man saith. For the edibility of beavers, see this old post (second-to-last paragraph). Posted by: Dr. Weevil at 8:45 AM on 26 November 2005 |