It sounds like the premise of an Ed Wood horror flick with a Hitchcockian twist: waves of beavers scurrying through a West Sacramento, Calif. neighborhood, toppling trees and damaging public property.
“I started getting lots of calls from concerned residents,” West Sacramento’s Urban Forest Manager Dena Kirtley told local CBS affiliate KOVR-TV.
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Those residents may be living in the vicinity of as many as 30 wood-chewing rodents, according to city officials. The beavers first moved into a Bridgeway Lakes neighborhood in much smaller numbers three years ago, but have since multiplied and spread to other areas. And it sounds like at least a few are on the ginormous side of the gene pool.
“They can weigh upwards of 70 pounds and some of them, by the damage on the trees, were a good four feet tall,” said Kirtley, adding that the damage has been “on a massive scale” and that he believes the beavers have taken down as many as a dozen local trees.
How many of the bucktoothed culprits have been rounded up so far? Just half a dozen, reports KOVR-TV, though considerably more are said to still be on the loose.
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