Beaver sounds like human baby
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00:00She was found just alone in a field. That's all we know.
00:02Meet Petunia.
00:04I'm Holly and this is Petunia's story for GeoGeeks.
00:09I volunteer with Woodside Wildlife Rescue and I primarily help them out with beavers.
00:14Just desperate for help.
00:15She must have only been maybe two days old, certainly less than a week.
00:18And so she had no idea what in the world was happening.
00:21And so she just looked at us like, okay, this is what happens in life.
00:24One minute I'm here and now I'm here with you.
00:26That's fine. I'll accept it. We're all good.
00:30She is very much a feisty little beaver.
00:35From the very beginning, all the plush toys that we were giving her to play with,
00:38she just grabs them and body slams them.
00:42She's basically in a little puppy kennel.
00:45We can leave her for a couple hours if she's sleeping.
00:48If she is awake and she has a need, she is going to start eating the kennel.
00:52She's going to destroy.
00:53She's going to reach her little hands out and do anything she can find.
00:56Their teeth are razors, literal razors.
00:59They can get through almost anything.
01:04What we see with our rehab beavers is that they
01:07love to move things around and change their environment.
01:10Sometimes that just means that they go around and grab whatever they can find
01:13and put it in a pile or make a dam inside the house.
01:26There's never a time where we can just sort of forget it.
01:29My husband will say, what vacation? How can we take a vacation?
01:32Being the beaver mom is a role that I accept.
01:34And it is something that I recognize is very important to their mental health and well-being.
01:39You can only have a little taste.
01:43One of the cool things about taking care of Petunia right now is that I have a one and
01:47a half year old beaver named Tulip.
01:49It's just a beautiful little girl.
01:50She's a beautiful little girl.
01:51She's a beautiful little girl.
01:53I have a one and a half year old beaver named Tulip.
01:57And introducing a tiny little two month old beaver to a one and a half year old beaver
02:02is something that no one has really ever written a book about.
02:04So I'm learning as I go.
02:06The first thing that Petunia is trying to do is grab on Tulip's back and ride on her back.
02:11And that is what they would do with their mom or other adult beavers.
02:14Because Tulip is like completely, this is new to her and she is wondering what it is.
02:19Now, I'm seeing much more of Tulip recognizing that Petunia is a positive thing in her life
02:24and something that can be fun and interesting.
02:30Petunia spends overnight inside the house.
02:32And then during the day, she goes out and visits with Tulip and spend some time outside
02:36then.
02:37She is now going on two months.
02:38And because she is, and it could be a he by the way, beavers are very difficult to tell
02:43gender.
02:43You really can only do it with an x-ray.
02:45You really can only do it with an x-ray.
02:47And that's not until they're a little older.
02:49So we're just guessing.
02:50Unfortunately, in Mississippi, beavers are classified as a nuisance species.
02:55My job as a university research professor is studying how humans and wildlife are all
03:00connected.
03:01They're actually creating healthier environments.
03:03They're protecting humans from floods and fires.
03:05We have to give them their space.
03:07But they're the best thing that we have to fight a lot of our environmental problems.
03:11The earliest you're supposed to release a beaver is two years old.
03:15However, sometimes it needs to take three years.
03:18I would tell Petunia, I am so happy you found your way to me.
03:22It's just a privilege.