Beaver waddles around Lower Mills before rescuers manage to get it back to the Neponset

A beaver that clambered up from the Neponset River at Lower Mills last night didn't want to go back to its watery home - would-be rescuers spent nearly two hours trying unsuccessfully to convince it to head back down to the river before Milton Police came to the rescue with a recycling bin - which they gently placed atop it and then slowly pushed it to the water.

Ann Walsh, who posted about the incident, reports on the gnawing drama on Adams Street at the Milton/Dorchester line:

We weren't first on the scene, but we hear it was in the street up closer to the intersection and some folks got it out of the street and onto the sidewalk.

The group then used all kinds of strategies to encourage it towards the storage place's driveway and then down and back up to a path that would let it reenter the water.

We hope it is on the right side of the Baker dam to get home, but this was the safest route to water.

BPD and 311/Animal Control were called, but nobody came to help. Milton Police came and helped to slow traffic and found us a recycling bin bc beaver wasn't cooperating with the plan so we eventually got it under the bin and slowly worked it up the hill in the parking lot to the path entrance.

My daughter is home on Spring Break and has been a seasonal park & forest Ranger the past few summers so she has some animal management experience so that helped.

Headed back home in the confines of a Milton recycling bin (photo by Libby Travis):