It may have only been about 30 centimetres tall with a plump figure and a slow waddle, but a bucktoothed beaver delivered quite the scare when it tried to gnaw its way into a home in Nanaimo, B.C.

Jessica Boyd was sitting in her living room watching television with her nine-year-old son sleeping upstairs on Wednesday evening when she said she heard a startling racket.

PHOTOS

 
beaver break in nanaimo

The beaver was last seen waddling down Sun Valley Drive on April 18. (Courtesy Jessica Boyd)

“I heard this horrible scratching sound,” she told CTV Vancouver Island on Thursday. “It actually sounded like somebody was trying to break in through the window.”

Alarmed, Boyd said she immediately called her neighbour who then called police. A lone officer responded within minutes and entered the backyard to search for the source of the noise.

“He's a big, burly, young RCMP guy. He had the vest on and everything, and he was a little frightened,” Boyd recalled.

Boyd said she grabbed an ice scraper in case she needed to defend herself from the possible intruder while she waited inside for the officer to investigate.

“I was shaking. I was so scared,” she said.

As backup officers arrived, the responding officer went to the laundry room to see if he could spot the suspect through the window, Boyd said. He heard some movement and shone his flashlight through the window to the area in question.

“They put their flashlights on it and the hands didn’t come up, but the paws came up,” Const. Kevin O’Brien of the Nanaimo RCMP said.

Even though it was caught with its tail between its legs, the beaver made a break for it, escaping into the night.

“The suspect was last seen waddling down Sun Valley Drive and it’s best described as about 12 inches high, somewhat overweight with a large tail and very large, yellow teeth,” O’Brien said.

It’s believed the mischievous rodent is in hiding in the nearby wetlands.

With a report from CTV Vancouver Island’s Chandler Griev