Yep - that's a mountian beaver and I have been fighting the little critters for 20 years. One day 20 years ago I planted several nice 6 foot rhoddies on my hillside behind my house. One day I woke up to admire my work and noticed a rhoddy missing from the top of the hill. All branches were trimmed to the ground and leading into a nearby hole in the hillside.

And so began "beaverquest 1990 to 2010". Here is what I learned over the years to trap them. First, they don't like to touch metal, so you need to sift your metal small animal trap into the ground. Next, line the trap with some vegetation, I usually use rhoddy leaves that they just got through trimming.

Lead small slices of apple out of the beavers hole leading into your trap and make sure the apple pieces go to the end of the trap so they can trip it.

Right now, as I write this message, I have a new beaver who is quite smart. This one keeps eating the apple slices and not setting the trap off. I have even set the trap hair trigger, but no luck yet.

These little suckers are quite destructive. They will eat rhoddies, azaleas, ferns, and hostas. My wife watched one a few years back each a large evergreen fern to the ground and hawl it off in less than an hour.

Here is how I catch them. Get a metal trap suitable to catch small live animals. Since mountain beavers don't like to touch metal, you need to sift your trap into the ground by moving back and forth making a nice sandy floor inside the trap. Next, cover the trap release mechanism with leaves. The food to use is sliced apples, leading them out of the hole and into the trap over the release mechanism.

Mountain beavers are very destructive and have eaten my rhoddies, azaleas, ferns and hostas to the ground. It took me 20 years to completely eliminate them.

Good luck - now I am tackling the racoons.

Definitely a mountain beaver.

Interesting recent article on Mountain Beavers
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/pacificnw...

Hi, that certainly is a mt. beaver but not one of the california subspecies given the location. For more, probably than you ever wanted to know, about mt. beaver or Aplodontia you can check out my journal at this address. I've been interested in the species for many years.
http://homepage.mac.com/dtsteele/Mountain_Beave...

Thanks, Dale

It's very likely a Mountain Beaver: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mountain_beaver

We have them in the Seattle area, and they are actually quite a nuisance. They dig holes in the ground which they often pad with plant matter (including seeds) for invasive plant species. In addition, the holes can become an ankle-twisting danger for people. They also have poor eyesight, so you can usually get quite close to them.

Just ran into one last night at midnite as I was watering my planting beds!!
Face to face with it,....my first sighting in 20 years here in Magnolia. He met my hose!!

"I had to prod it gently with a barbecue fork to get it away from my pea vines.”

I prefer urban beaver......

They are cute, but they are DESTRUCTIVE. They routinely destabilize the side of a ravine near our house, and it has to be shored up periodically. Not good for our foundations. Powerful little critters.

Mountain Beaver!!!!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mountain_Beaver

I saw one before near the dog park on Golden Gardens Drive.

It looks like it could use some help from the wildlife center..if it is a baby it needs food.....

I think it a small beaver ....mutant ?

May be a pocket gopher....

Could it be a 'mountain beaver?' Molly

guinea pig gone native?

Not one mention of Chupacabra?

Wasn't El Chupacabra supposed to be a reptile?

Looks a lot like a guinea pig, but I think the toes are wrong. Hard to tell from this picture. It also appears to have longer whiskers than you usually see on GP's.

More info here:
http://icwdm.org/handbook/rodents/ro_b53.pdf

and here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mountain_Beaver

That is our Porkbelly pig Mayor Nickels, running for cover before he gets crushed

Ahh, it IS a mountain beaver! Cool!

Thems good eatin'

I saw a possum three nights ago in Ballard. I didn't even know Seattle had possums.

I caught a baby possum in my garage last week. Poor little guy's mom lay dead in the street a block away, I think.

I thought my dog killed a possum in our backyard in the half second before I could pull her away, but it turned out the possum was just "playing possum". I was convinced it was dead until I came back outside to find it gone.

I saw a family of possums running ages ago. It was a dusk till dawn kind of moment, early am, the dog scared them out of trash, and they all took off with their waddling butts, and bald tails scurring to someother hiding place before the dawn settled in.

Yes, that looks like a mountain to me as well, although I'm still recovering from laughter at "Combat Wombat" - he's even doing the commando crawl!!!

oops, apparently I made a mountain out of a mole-like creature. I meant "mountain beaver". I guess I shouldn't laugh and type.

it is the ever elusive snipe

Looks like a mountain beaver, great article about them in the Pacific Northwest section of the Sunday Seattle Times(Feb 8, 2009). I have seen one in Golden Gardens park, unafraid of me and loved water. He was on the side of a hill enjoying the flowing water eating plants. Looked like a friendly harmless cute critter.

mah boyfrin breeds guinneys and sells em to chilrins who need pets- one musta scaped and ben lookin for supper. theys is trained to answer to a fat lady whistlin, reel em in that way. boyfrin can come swoop it up once the lil rascal is trapped.

That is a guinea pig that a pet owner probably dumped. As a former rescue owner I saw it all the time. Some child got "bored" of his new pet and the parent wouldn't take responsibility and let it loose in a park. They usually do not survive well in the wild, as they've been domesticated since the Incas.

Wow...looks like we've got an R.O.U.S. on our hands.

I can only see the R.O. part of that.

Perhaps he's a R.O.O.S.? (Rodent Of Ordinary Size?)

Nice one, Ducky! Was hoping somebody would mention it. ;-)

Why is it not a marmot? That's what it looks like to me!

Snallygaster!

Yeppers - Mountain Beavers do not see well and have little fear of humans. Live trap him and put him in an area that has water and foliage and you won't see him again. I speak from my own experience with one of the little fellows

Just out of curiosity, how do you trap them? A shoebox? Do they bite? Can they contract rabies?

An interesting tidbit about mountain beavers --

"Although the largest flea (Hystrichopsylla schefferi) in the world—it is up to ¼ inch long—is found on mountain beavers and in their burrows, it does not bother humans."

Thank you! I knew I had mountain beavers in my yard because I could see their burrows but had never seen one. Thanks for the pictures and the info.

My dog and I have spotted some sort of creature at the peripheral of our path during our early morning walks. We've only seen this creature a few times. I've tried to describe it to my wife, who thought maybe this animal is what we saw but our creature was substantially larger. Who knows, maybe we saw the mama!

looks like a mountain beaver, aplodontia, the world's most primitive rodent. they're native to the northwest, and have fur as soft as chinchillas. sweet and harmless, unless you're a young cedar tree, then it will want to live in your root system.

Mountain Beaver. They love to eat rhody blossoms. I thought people were stealing my flowers because the teeth of these little varmints make it look like someone "cuts" the plant. I discovered one eating one day. You can call animal control and the will bring you a trap to catch and them have him/her relocated.

Mountain beaver (Aplodontia rufa californica) as per Ken's ID.

The US Forest Service has a photo that resembles the guy on your deck at:

http://www.fs.fed.us/r5/ltbmu/images/contact/wi...

And the Washington State Department of Fish and Wildlife has a page on them:

http://wdfw.wa.gov/wlm/living/mtn_beavers.htm

It's a Combat Wombat

forget all these people and there scientific answers, this is the best answer.

Not a nutria - no big orange teeth, and too small. from the looks of the claws/feet it looks like some kind of mole, burrowing animal...

Ken's right. A vole is smaller and can have a tail.

It looks like a vole (that's vole, not mole) which is a member of the mouse and rat family.

That is a mountain beaver. Common in the Pacific Northwest; marked presence in Discovery Park. (Though you won't see them from the trail.)