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West Howe Sounder

West Howe Sound
horse
Beatrix the mini-horse was evacuated from a fire zone near 100 Mile House and is now living temporarily in Roberts Creek. Here she’s introduced to Luigi the cat.

This week I’ve got a couple of animal tales to tell. The first may be a scary one for anyone who walks though lower Langdale near the ferry. 

At the top of the beach access stairs on Tideview Road I spotted a blue-painted shoulder-high corrugated pipe. Steel mesh covered one end and a ramp led up to a steel door on the other. A sign on the side of the contraption stated “Danger – Live Bear Trap – Keep Away.” 

My curiosity took over. I tiptoed to the meshed end of the cylinder. A small plastic cooler hung from the ceiling inside. To my relief, there was no bear. 

Dean Miller, the wildlife conservation officer who had placed the trap on Monday, warns people not to follow my example. “You don’t want to be anywhere near where a bear could be,” he said. 

A bear had recently approached children at Camp Elphinstone. There were also reports of a bear entering three separate houses in just one day last weekend in the Tideview area. “We think it’s the same bear,” Miller said. On Sunday, the bear followed a child walking up the beach access stairs. That prompted the trap. 

The cooler holds a bear’s favourite goodies: sweets and meat. If the bear enters the trap, trying to grab them, the door will swing shut. As of Tuesday morning, the beast hadn’t taken the bait. 

Despite Miller’s stay-away warning for humans, the BC Conservation Officer Service doesn’t regularly check the trap. Rather, it relies on the public to report if they see an imprisoned animal. Anyone who does is asked to call 877-952-7277 and hit option one, “conflicts with wildlife.” 

My next animal tale involves Langdale cottage owner Lee-Anne Smith, who brought a 14-month-old mini-horse to the Sunshine Coast. 

Beatrix, the mini horse, had been evacuated from a fire zone near 100 Mile House and taken to a ranch in Ladner. Smith then coaxed her into a stall in a mini-van and set off for Horseshoe Bay on July 27. 

She arrived at the terminal an hour before the 1:35 p.m. sailing. She told the flag people, the ticket seller, and the traffic manager in the line-up that she was carrying a horse. She put on her four-way flashers. Still, she had to wait for the next sailing, which was late. 

The filly endured the wait in 26-degree heat, Smith said. The van had no air conditioning with its engine off in the line-up. Smith said she couldn’t take the horse out of the vehicle because it might have taken hours to wrangle the jittery critter back in. 

Cathalynn Labonte-Smith of Gibsons said the horse would have already been nervous. Labonte-Smith, a wildfire blogger with 2,000 readers, has a sister who reared two mini-horses. “The heat (near the fire) would be tremendous, especially for a small horse. The minis don’t have much in the way of lungs,” she said. 

During the wait at the ferry terminal, the horse “paw, paw, pawed,” Smith said. “That’s shows she was anxious. And she was walking in circles in the van.” After the ferry trip, Beatrix was sick from stress, Smith said. She wouldn’t go near a human for a week. 

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Deborah Marshall, spokesperson for BC Ferries, said when I talked with her. 

Marshall explained that BC Ferries encourages all customers with vehicles carrying livestock on reservable routes to make reservations. They are free for people with livestock. 

The cut off time is two hours before the sailing. “Vehicles carrying livestock without reservations will not be guaranteed travel, but best efforts will be made to accommodate them,” Marshall stated later in an email. 

Smith said the ferries should have let her on despite not having a reservation. She had tried calling the reservation line at least four times, but she couldn’t get through. 

Beatrix is now living at Smith’s other property, an acreage in Roberts Creek. Smith plans to train her as a therapy horse for residents of care homes. 

I visited Beatrix on Aug. 6, some ten days after the ferry ride. She nuzzled her nose to my thigh. That was a good sign, Smith said. 

If you have any animal tales or other stories about West Howe Sound, please email me at Elizabeth@Rains.ca