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Oregon Road Conditions & Cams Email Story to a Friend March 16, 2006 Beaver leads trooper on wild chase When Oregon State Police Trooper Robert Gorman first approached a very lost and likely sex-starved beaver Saturday in the most improbable of places — a dock raised high above the bay at Port Orford — he knew this was something they don’t prep you for at the police academy. "It’s the first time I’ve ever had to chase down a beaver," Gorman says. The paranoid �ber-rodent escaped Gorman’s capture by launching itself off the dock to the ocean 20 feet below, eventually riding the outgoing tide toward Japan. Instantly, this case became more than your standard attempt to elude. "I thought, I need to see this through to make sure he has a safe return," says Gorman, 35. "After all, I was the reason he was in the water in the first place." One commercial fisherman, a noose, a driftboat, one surfer, a pickup, two dogs, a salmon net and a borrowed dog kennel later, this tired and salty beaver became the newest tool to help bring a rare orchid back to a meadow 20 miles away. The wayward beaver made it through three hours of hell at sea before his safe capture by Gorman with a series of impromptu tools that would make MacGyver proud. Advertisement Now the beaver is living in a Nature Conservancy-owned meadow that was once a stronghold for the Lady’s Slipper orchid, an endangered plant the beaver could help restore. And, he might soon get that flat-tailed female companion he was looking for that probably put him in this pickle in the first place. It’s a Marlin-Perkins-meets-Jacques-Cousteau kind of capture-and-relocate story, with a flower-power twist. "It’s all pretty odd," Gorman says. "Really odd." The oddity likely began with the most common of animalistic urges. The beaver probably was living a bachelor’s life in Hubbard Creek, a tiny stream that flows into the Pacific about a half-mile south of Port Orford in northern Curry County. In spring, lonely males will wander to other creeks in search of mates, and "if you’re living in Hubbard Creek, the only way to the next creek is through the ocean," says Clayton Barber, an Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife biologist in nearby Gold Beach. Presumably, the beaver ditched Hubbard Creek and either swam or waddled up to Port Orford. There, he crossed a road and entered the port, somehow ending up on a floating dock hauled skyward by a port crane when unused. That’s where Gorman approached it about 12:15 p.m. Saturday. He called Barber, who told Gorman to try and catch it. That’s when commercial fisherman Dave Rickel noticed Gorman and the beaver. Rickel borrowed a dog noose and portable kennel from his dog-grooming wife and joined the fray. Before the pair could lasso the beaver, "it started getting paranoid and jumped off the dock 20 feet to the water," Gorman says. The outgoing tide quickly washed the rodent 500 yards away. "We watched it, hoping it would be OK," Gorman says. "After it was out there an hour, I thought the thing was going to get tired and drown." So Rickel ran home, got his driftboat, and launched it at the port. Gorman and Rickel used the driftboat’s small outboard motor to head out to the beaver. The plan was to catch the beaver in Rickel’s salmon-fishing net. But every time they got close, the beaver dove. So they decided to herd the beaver toward shore, with some success. When eight-foot swells threatened to swamp the small boat, Gorman went to Plan D. "There was a surfer out there," Gorman says. "I said, ‘See that beaver? Try to chase him to shore.’" The surfer obliged by steering it to a nearby beach, where the tired beaver instantly encountered two unleashed dogs. As the dogs harassed the beaver, Gorman and Rickel motored back to port. Gorman drove his pickup to the beach, and ordered the dog owners to leave with their pets. When the beaver spied Gorman, he started waddling back to the sea. Gorman had to act fast. "We forgot the kennel and the noose, but I had the salmon net," Gorman says. Gorman plopped the net over the beaver and stood on the net’s metal rim until Rickel arrived with the kennel. Finally, they wrangled the beaver into the kennel and hoisted it into the back of Gorman’s pickup. "That beaver was sitting in the front of the cage with his two front paws holding the cage like a prisoner wanting to get out of jail," Gorman says. At Barber’s behest, Gorman drove south to Nesika Beach to meet Joan Cooper. She’s a beaver-lover who lives adjacent to the Nature Conservancy’s 10-acre wetland, once home to a healthy population of Lady’s Slipper orchids. But that was when the small, unnamed creek running through it had beavers, Cooper says. The beavers left, the wetland became brushy and now only a handful of the extremely rare orchids sprout in spring, Cooper says. "If we shovel a few beaver in there, it might restore the stream’s natural functions and create the right habitat conditions for that orchid," Barber says. "I don’t know if it will or not, but it’s worth a try." Cooper directed Gorman to the creek. The inmate beaver let go of the cage bars and Gorman opened the cage. "He was so fast getting into that creek," Cooper says. "We tried to get a picture, but we weren’t quick enough." Now, the formerly lonely, sex-starved beaver of Hubbard Creek is the current lonely, sex-starved beaver with no bucktoothed companion to share his Lady’s Slipper orchid patch. "He’s stuck in the same situation as before," Barber says. "Maybe we can help him by throwing a female in there." 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