Emily Fairfax

A lot of opportunity to grow, though, because for every situation that resolves really well, there's quite a few more that don't.

And I know that we just need to keep pushing and reminding people this beaver is important.

It's nature.

It's a little chaotic.

Give it some time.

We can be quite impatient.

We're like when beavers are out trying to find their new territory, the little dispersing juveniles once a year, if one just passes through someone's property, sometimes they freak out and they say, oh shoot, there's a beaver here.

I need a trapper to get rid of it.

The beaver would have left on its own within a week or two, but we're just so impatient.

If we see something that feels wrong, it has to be solved right now instead of waiting to see what happens.

We have a lot in common with beavers.

I frequently joke that the only creature more stubborn than humans is beavers.

And it sure doesn't do us any favors when both of us want to live right next to the river and we have a really different picture of what that should look like.

But I think it's also good.

Because sometimes it's hard for people to relate to animals or to understand them or to have empathy for them.

But when people learn about beavers and learn that they have families and they just want to make a safe home for their family and they are very social and they're very smart and they're little engineers and they're kind of chaotic and they get the zoomies.

It starts to feel a lot more relatable and it makes us pause and think, well, I get that feeling.

Maybe I shouldn't, you know, remove this beaver or trap it out.