Your anti-rodent candidate

Dave Spackman’s pink campaign signs read: “Vote Dave Spackman. Kill The Beavers.”

This is not some sort of joke. Dave Spackman, candidate for regional and city council in Oshawa, actually wants to kill beavers. Though he wants you to know that he wouldn’t personally do the killing.

“People think I’m going to go down and swim across with an axe in my hand to kill them,” he told the Star’s Carola Vyhnak. “I want to kill them but I wouldn’t kill them myself.”

The beavers in question live in a colony in the Goodman Creek neighbourhood. The city was going to kill them, fearing their dam could cause flooding, but public outrage this summer prompted councillors to change their minds. They then approved a plan to keep water levels under control while allowing the beavers to live — for $60,000, far too much money for a “beaver motel,” said Spackman, a real estate broker. Extermination, he noted, is cheaper. Therefore, he argued, extermination is better.

He said people who see his signs get over their initial shock and outrage once they hear him explain that the beavers’ continued existence is a fiscal problem.

“They’re saying, ‘Dave, get our taxes down.’ And they're asking for their own sign.”

Not everybody is convinced. One resident who emailed the Star about the signs said they were “extremely offensive no matter how you look at it” and should be taken down by the city.

Rival candidate Bill Steele, meanwhile, said Spackman’s effort to jolt people into noticing him is teaching kids that it’s okay to go out and throw rocks at the animal that adorns our nickel.

10 things Rocco Rossi could do with his newfound free time

1. Take each of 17 supporters out for coffee.

2. Watch Goodfellas over and over again.

3. Buy toy shovel, dig tunnel to Gardiner beginning in family backyard.

4. Wander into Union Station naked and on fire. See if anybody notices.

5. Design, order, wear “I outlasted Sarah Thomson” t-shirt.

6. Hang out with Sarah Thomson.

7. Lie on hoods of cars parked at expired meters. As parking enforcement officers approach, yell “GRACE PERIOD, GRACE PERIOD, GRACE PER. . . ”

8. Post nasty comments on Warren Kinsella’s blog under handle “kinsellasuckz”.

9. Singlehandedly erect barrier alongside each and every Toronto bike lane.

10. Wallow in sadness.

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