A wayward beaver hiding in the garage of the Wood County Office Building has been transported to a new home at Otsego Park.
Head of courthouse complex security, Rob Eaton, said a county employee arriving at work Friday morning reported a rodent sneaking into the parking garage in the center of Bowling Green.
“They thought it was a groundhog that ran in when the garage door opened,” Eaton said. However, when a maintenance worker went to check it out, the scale-covered tail was a dead giveaway. “That’s not a groundhog,” Eaton said.
The beaver was holed up in a corner of the garage.
“There’s not a lot of places to hide in the parking garage,” Wood County Administrator Andrew Kalmar said.
Finding wildlife in the garage is not all that unusual.
“We get an occasional rabbit,” Kalmar said. In those instances, “they get enough people to guide it out the door.”
But the courthouse crew wasn’t sure where the beaver might find a body of water in the city.
“Who knows where the thing came from,” Kalmar said. “It’s highly unusual.”
Eaton agreed.
“We’ve had critters in there before, but we’ve never had a beaver,” he said.
A Wood County Park District officer brought a live trap to the parking garage, and positioned it near the beaver.
“It went right in,” Eaton said.
The beaver was then taken by the park district officer to Otsego Park, on the edge of the Maumee River. The officer sent Eaton a video of the beaver returning to the wild and heading straight into the river
“The beaver turns and looks back at the officer, splashes its tail and disappeared under the water,” Eaton said.
