West Vancouver’s 15th Street corridor has been looking more like a Hinterland Who’s Who than a posh neighbourhood and shopping district this week.
Ottawa Avenue resident John Ruddick was enjoying his backyard view Sunday afternoon when he spotted a bobcat enjoying his garden. “It was just this weird-looking cat that my neighbour pointed out,” Ruddick said.
Ruddick fetched his camera to grab a few shots of the big cat, which wandered around his garden for about half an hour before it skittered away. “It’s quite powerful.
It jumped up over my compost and into the hedge and disappeared,” he said.
Ruddick said he was not concerned by the bobcat as his only pet is a parrot who keeps indoors, but he wanted his neighbours to be aware of it.
Then, on Monday West Vancouver police were dealing with what’s being called the “most Canadian traffic jam.”
Two officers were driving down 15th Street at Bellevue Avenue just after 7 a.m. when they saw someone following close behind a furry brown lump on the road.
“Then we realized it was a beaver and oh my god, what’s a beaver doing there?” said Const. Jeff Palmer, West Vancouver Police Department spokesman.
Other officers started redirecting traffic while Palmer and nearby citizens tried to shoo the rodent to nearby John Lawson Park, where there is a stream and pond where beavers are known to hang out.
“We started beaver herding. He wasn’t super eager to go,” Palmer said.
Palmer put the word out on social media and quickly found his smartphone “blowing up” with social media alerts as the story spread around the Lower Mainland and beyond. “People love that national symbol there,” he said.
There are plenty of beavers that call the nearby streams and ponds home but they tend to stay off of busy streets, according to conservation officer Simon Gravel.
“It’s the first time I’ve heard of that in 10 years here,” he said, noting that the species is nocturnal. “He was probably going home for sleeping after a busy night. . . . It was a kind gesture of the police to stop traffic and just let the beaver go back to his habitat.”
Much like beavers, bobcats also have a healthy population on the south coast, but sightings are rare as they tend to make a point of not being seen, Gravel said.
After seeing Ruddick’s photos, Gravel said the bobcat was likely a juvenile. “He could have been separated from his mommy or, maybe he’s in his first year of adulthood and starting to do his own thing.”
There’s never been a recorded case of a bobcat attacking a human, but they have been known to “push their luck” and go after pets, Gravel said.
