Errant Mountain Beaver

Folks up here on the ridge were recently roused to declare their biophilia when a mountain beaver was reported swimming down the Butte Creek Flume.

One of our local naturalists, a retired bike-riding school teacher known by his avatar Forest, documented the rare event in video.

This is the first verified record of mountain beaver in Butte County, and the discovery begs the question: From whence the errant rodent?

I'm an enthusiast of these guinea pig size rodents, and I recognize their haunts when I see them, but I have never seen their signs in the county of Butte.

They require lush vegetation for food and live in moist habitats with shallow water tables, Their burrows often tap into underground springs.

I guess I have to look a little harder.

Arctos, an extensive database of zoological records, lists mountain beaver specimens from several counties in the Sierra Nevada, including Shasta, Plumas, Eldorado, Sierra, Nevada, Placer, Mono, Mariposa, and Tulare.

I suspect this particular rodent entered the flume voluntarily, swam around, and went with the flow.

But here's the rub. Its flume float could not have been longer than about 3 miles.

If the rodent had embarked on its swim further upstream it would have passed into a deadly siphon that conveys the water down and then up a ravine.

Even Houdini couldn't have made it through that siphon alive.

If the mountain beaver's odyssey started above the siphon, it had to travel by land to bypass the siphon and reach the flume's navigable portion.

Unfortunately, the neighborhood's flumes do not lead to suitable habitat for mountain beavers. So I doubt this rodent's trip led it to greener pastures.

It was an unusual event and it makes you wonder.

Did the mountain beaver abandon its home because of the drought? Or was it just a normal attempt to disperse that few people ever see?

We're lucky to have naturalists like Forest here.

The carcass disappears

I was absent-mindedly amusing myself, tossing Fred's stick into Hendrick's flume, when I found myself looking at a carcass in the water, a fawn in winter coat.

When I pulled my camera from the bag, I inadvertently flipped my pruning saw into the water, and soon realized that Fred wasn't about to heed my desperate commands to fetch it.

As I watched my saw drift into a riffle I jumped in and rescued it myself.

That's when Fred finally noticed the drowned deer and looked at me as if to say, "What now?"

The carcass was without injuries, but it couldn't have drowned here; it must have happened a few miles upstream where the flume's vertical sides channel much swifter and deeper water.

I heaved it up on the far bank, dragged it into a patch of thimbleberry canes, but decided against setting a camera nearby.  Too many people with dogs.

The carcass was untouched on the following two days, but I assumed it would be gone when I returned from a four-day trip to Mono County with Random Truth and Jake.

Not so. It was still there yesterday afternoon, day seven.

Though unscathed, it had ripened enough to call in a vulture, but the bird hadn't started its work.

Today the carcass was gone, but no scraps and whitewash told of sated vultures.

Fred's carefree approach was soon checked.

He sniffed about cautiously, then stopped in his tracks, raised his hackles, and growled and barked with agitation.

There was no drag trail, and it's my guess that a bear packed it off.

It took seven days for the vulture, and eight days for a bear to find it.