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A second pair was freed the next year in September on .Jeremy’s Run. But the bad luck continued for the buck-toothed builders. Rangers found a beaver skeleton — maybe the 1938 female, maybe the 1939 female. From there, the press picked up the story, minus certain relevant facts.
“Park Rangers wish Billy Beaver would come home,” announced the Northern Virginia Daily of Dec. 6. ‘“Billy Beaver, who with his estranged mate are the only survivors of four beaver originally placed in the park, picked up in a huff sometime ago and moved across a mountain range into Rappahannock County where he’s taken up quarters on Piney Run.
“Meantime his mate continues to keep up the old homeplace . . . Park rangers say they’re confident they cap patch things up it they can just get hold of Billy, but the industrious little animal seems to prefer bachelorhood . . . and goes into hiding every time rangers show up on Piney Run where he’s building a dam.”
Tlte Washington Post of Dec. 7 reported that “a beaver named Billy doesn’t give a conservation damn in the Shenandoah National Park,” adding that Billy had left his wife “and started a private dam project.”
The Virginia Sfa>‘ in Culpeper carried on with the saga of Billy Beaver, announcing on Dec. 14 that the critter had been “working mightily” on the apple trees in Dr. Johnson’s orchard in Sperryville. “He has kept continually at this mighty destruction, even though Dr. Johnson and C. Ennis Brown, our efficient game warden, have notified the Rangers.”
To stop the mighty marauder, accused of cutting down full-grown apple trees overnight, the rangers first brought a cage made of wire poultry netting.
“Then they brought 20 CCC boys with only two picks and only one shovel,” the newspaper reported. “Of course Billy got a great kick out of seeing three men working and 17 loafing."
The paper noted that Billy’s attack on the trees had continued for two weeks. “And all the consolation that the doctor gets from the executive experts is that the government will pay all the damages — which may be true, but if Uncle Sam takes time in proportion to the recapture of Billy by his rangers, then Dr. Johnson’s great-grandson will be as old as Methuselah before he ever gets a cent.”
The day after Christmas, Superintendent Lassiter announced that Billy had been “removed to another section where it is hoped both he and his neighbors may live in comparative peace.”
He also noted that Dr. Johnson had submitted a damage claim for
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