Vancouver, British Columbia is the new home for a couple of destructive beavers.
Vancouver, British Columbia is the new home for a couple of destructive beavers. Charles Mudede

Vancouver, British Columbia, the second biggest, but certainly the most beautiful, city in the Pacific Northwest, has a crow that uses the public transportation (something many Americans don't do), and, until a few months ago, had a deer that was so comfortable with humans and their built environment that it regularly strolled the streets of downtown. (Like so many pedestrians last year, Downtown Deer was hit and killed by a car.)

Recently, beavers left the wild and moved into a body of water, False Creek, that's in the heart of the city. (Beavers are basically aquatic rats.) More interesting yet, the beavers have built a dam in a pond made by humans—it's a constructed niche in a constructed niche. They have also destroyed a lots of trees in the process, and made life miserable for birds that once nested and rested in the safety of those teeth-felled trees.

As for the dam itself, for human eyes, it has the appearance of a complete mess (bees and certain termites are by far better architects than beavers). It's also said to be growing and growing. This class of rodent has a need for wood that's inexhaustible. There is, indeed, something tiresome about beavers and all of their dam building. It seems they can do nothing else but bite, down, and drag trees.



The beaver's Twitter account has only 24 followers.