Photo Jay Shumaker, VSA Hwy Maintenance
Road superintendent Jay Shumaker sees a lot of interesting stuff on the job for VSA Highway Maintenance, and he shared a story with us from yesterday over the phone.
It happened last night around 7:30 while he and his crew were monitoring a bridge about 10 kilometres west of Merritt, where you've likely heard there's been flooding.
They had partly closed off a bridge where Guichon Creek goes under Highway 8, making it single lane alternating as there was debris getting washed up onto it.
Out of nowhere, a large beaver got "tossed up onto the bridge deck" after floating from somewhere upstream.
The creature looked disoriented and began walking around in circles, trying to figure out what had just happened to it.
Eventually it found its way over a berm the crew had put into place and back to the edge of the creek, where it jumped into the water and continued to get hauled downstream.
This was one of two beavers Jay spotted on the job yesterday. One was about a kilometre from the spot where this one washed up, and he nearly tripped over it. We asked if it might have been the same one but he offered that no, the second was smaller than the bridge beaver.
While people are being asked to evacuate by the government as water levels rise, the beavers also seem to be getting displaced - albeit a little more aggressively - by Mother Nature.
