Beaver’s bite is back
PULLMAN – When Bailey the beaver was struck by a car near Lewiston this spring, she lost the most important tool a beaver has.
Its bite.
A beaver’s rust-colored front teeth are formidable, growing constantly and hard enough to gnaw through about anything.
“They’re stone chisels, is really what they are,” said Charlie Powell, spokesman for the Washington State University veterinary school.
Luckily, Bailey’s four front teeth have come back since her accident in April, under the careful care of wildlife experts at WSU, with a tub and tree limbs in her cage. Chances are good she will be released back into the wild by August, said Angela Teal, a veterinary technician who helps care for injured wildlife at the school.
It’s a happy ending from the perspective of wildlife rehabilitation, since lots of wild animals become too spoiled or softened by human contact to be turned loose again.
The WSU vet school treats scores of wild and domestic animals each year – current residents include an ailing camel – but beavers have been relatively rare. Powell said this is the second one he’s seen in his 17 years there.
Other than the loss of her teeth, Bailey wasn’t too badly injured, Teal said. But they had to improvise to figure out how to take care of the 41-pound beaver, who’s likely 1 ½ to 2 years old.
“We don’t really carry a supply of bark, and we don’t have a pond with lily pads for them to eat,” she said.
They started by feeding Bailey baby food, then moved on to soft berries and then to dandelions and corn. Though beavers’ diet is mostly bark, they also eat other vegetation in the wild.
Because she has lost a lot of muscle, Bailey will have to be kept at a rehabilitation center until later in the year, after the season of cold, strong runoff.
Powell said media inquiries have flooded the school, following the announcement of Bailey’s recovery, and the story has appeared on national media outlets such as CNN and USA Today.
“These are probably the most famous beaver teeth in all of human history,” he said.