The Great Beaver Slaughter of 2017 at Birmingham's historic Roebuck Golf Course began one January morning. It didn't stop until 17 beavers were dead.

Did the beavers have to go?

Yes, according to prominent biologists.

Were the beavers political casualties?

Maybe so, and in more ways than one, based on the statements made by the president of the Birmingham City Council.

Did the beavers make the ultimate sacrifice for the endangered fish species that inhabits Roebuck Spring, as all agencies involved claim? Or did the beavers die to preserve the No. 8 fairway of a golf course affectionately, and somewhat mockingly, known as "Rogusta"?

This is the story of a modern-day "Caddyshack" at a municipal course once made famous by the most influential Southern golfer the game ever produced, Bobby Jones. It's a story of man versus nature, nature versus nature, government versus government.

But, above all, it's a story about one of the most peculiar golf courses in the eccentric South.

Bill Murray's Carl Spackler never got the gopher at mythical Bushwood Country Club. In Birmingham's modern-day adaptation, it didn't end well for the furry animals, but they died, say scientists, to preserve another, more favored animal, the endangered and federally protected fish known as the watercress darter.

The beavers also died, it must be written, to preserve the gently sloping fairway of Roebuck's No. 8 par 4, which doglegs to the right and over a stream, a stream that beavers were using to turn the abutting fairway into a beaver pond.

According to golf course employees, the prolific and resourceful beavers were rounded up in January with "pitchforks" and "by government employees." The largest of all, weighing in at 38 pounds, was frozen by one of the maintenance staffers for future consumption. This all happened after Birmingham City Council President Johnathan Austin visited the course, and produced a Facebook Live video demanding coverage by television news stations, and implicating negligence by, well, somebody.

"This is real news," Austin said during his video. "This is coming to you live from Rogusta, where something needs to be done about this. This is beautiful city property. We are trying to preserve the property that we have, take care of the property we already have."

Austin plays regularly at Roebuck Golf Course, along with many other prominent members of the Birmingham business, political and legal communities. (In full disclosure, if I had a home course, it would be Roebuck.)

ROGUSTA, NOT AUGUSTA

"Rogusta" can in no way be compared to Augusta National -- the majestic, golfing Eden. At "Rogusta," the charm is its unpretentiousness. Traditional golf etiquette is liberally interpreted. There are no tee times, and there is no dress code, either. A golfer could, for example, play 18 holes in a camouflage safari hat, bathing suit and flip-flops.

The course is located off First Avenue North between two of Birmingham's oldest neighborhoods, North East Lake and Roebuck. It was originally called Roebuck Country Club, but hasn't gone by that name since 1914.

There is a debate whether or not the course opened in 1911, but no one argues Roebuck's most famous champion. In the summer of 1915, two weeks after narrowly losing the prestigious Southern Amateur at his home course in Atlanta, a 13-year-old Bobby Jones defeated Bill Badham on the third extra hole of Roebuck's invitational. According to "The Grand Slam: Bobby Jones, America, and the Story of Golf," Jones "played Badham even to the twenty-first hole, looked him straight in the eye, and stuck a pitch dead at the flag to win his first big tournament."

A prominent sign in Roebuck's clubhouse attributes this quote to Jones: "I always love Roebuck, because that was the first important tournament I won."

Through the middle of all this history, and economically priced golf, runs a stream fed by Roebuck Spring, which is protected by the Endangered Species Act and managed by the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service. There are many prominent signs along the golf course that warn golfers and maintenance staffers of the importance of the spring, and there's a $4 million reason for that.

At the headwaters of Roebuck Spring, only a few hundred yards above the course, a picturesque beaver pond serves as an incubator for the rare and beautiful watercress darter, a colorful species of fish that naturally occurs in just four springs, all of which are in Jefferson County. The watercress darter was discovered in Bessemer in 1964, and the Roebuck Spring population of the tiny fish was found in the late 1970s.

"Back in the '70s, there were no watercress darters in the golf course creek itself," said Michael Howell, the biologist who discovered, named and described the fish. "That is because there was a small tributary coming in right above the golf course, and a man up on the hill had been putting copper sulfate in the water to kill all the snails and stuff because his kids liked to play in that area in the creeks and springs and on his property.

"And so it killed all the fish in that stream and it killed all the fish and snails from that point on and all the way through the golf course. And so the only darters that were living were those that were living above the golf course."

Throughout the years, and thanks to biologists, conservationists and, most importantly, the constant flow of cool, clean spring water, the watercress darters have survived despite all attempts by mankind to alter or destroy their habitat. It's a persistent little fish, but in 2008 many people thought human stupidity had finally trumped the hardy nature of Birmingham's urban celebrity fish.

BACKHOE BLUNDER

Almost a decade ago, a supervisor for Birmingham Park and Recreation ordered the destruction of the beaver pond and the man-made levee it rested upon because two tennis courts were being flooded. The backhoe removed the dam and levee, and the sudden loss in habit drained the pond and killed about 12,000 of the watercress darter.

Combined, the U.S. Department of Interior and the Alabama Department of Conservation sued the city for $4 million, and federal officials called the backhoe incident one of the largest fish kills in the history of the Endangered Species Act. The city settled most of the fines out of court after cooperating with U.S. Fish & Wildlife to preserve the habitat, but litigation associated with that lawsuit remains. Part of the deal affected the golf course and, by and by, multiple generations of unlucky beavers.

In other words, the backhoe savagery changed everything.

In the past 10 years, the maintenance crew at "Rogusta" hasn't been allowed to step within 25 feet of the stream that runs through the course. Mowing, trimming, cutting and any other funny business that might somehow affect the fish hasn't been allowed. Maintenance staffers aren't even allowed to clean trash out of the water, so they claim. An old shopping cart was lodged in the creek bed next to the No. 8 green for years. Thousands of plastic bottles litter the water.

Golfers don't like looking at all the trash, but the single-minded beavers of "Rogusta" were made of tougher stuff. When trees started growing back along the banks of the golf course, the beavers did what beavers do: they moved in and claimed the territory as their own.

"The golfers are all upset because they won't cut the vegetation within so many feet of the creek, and they're always hitting their balls into the vegetation out there," said Howell, the biologist and a former Samford professor. "Well, I look at it as just another hazard."

But it's more than that. Over the past few years, the beavers have transformed a portion of the golf course into wetlands. Until recently, the beaver annex was mostly in an out-of-bounds area, but the beavers weren't satisfied with merely punishing the hard slices of hack golfers.

Left to their own devices, and protected by federal attorneys, beavers are gonna go beaver all over the place. They, you know, stay busy. The beavers wanted more. They joined forces with other beavers down creek, lodged up, multiplied and went to work redirecting the flow of the golf course's stretch of stream into the No. 8 fairway. A course maintenance worker said the stream has moved 35 to 40 feet over the past few years. At one point, before the beaver kill, the rodents engineered a large pond in the middle of the fairway with two small waterfalls cresting over the banks of the bend in the stream.

In truth, those beavers were the Robert Trent Joneses of the rodent world, and Bobby Jones, who designed Augusta many years after playing "Rogusta," probably would have been proud, for the beavers turned a moderately challenging hole into a roguish par 4 that forced golfers to use their brains, and either fairway woods or long irons off the tee.

Drivers off the box would simply carry downhill into the newly formed water hazard. Forced to lay up in front of the new beaver pond, golfers were using four and five irons to try and reach the green, which is now forever soggy and soupy on account of the altered stream. Forget divots, successfully splashing down on the green resulted in huge muddy craters.

Obviously, something had to be done. Golfers couldn't use their drivers. The beavers had gone too far.

DARTERS DOING FINE

For the watercress darter, it has all turned out OK.

Not only did the population of fish near the mouth of the spring recover from the backhoe blunder, but the darters, protected by the government and fostered by the beavers, moved downstream and began to thrive. The Roebuck Golf Course is now home to the single largest population of the watercress darter in Jefferson County, which also means in the world.

See, in a perfect world -- or just a world without streets, and neighborhoods, and tennis courts, and a golf course built around and through a large spring system -- Birmingham beavers create the habitat that allows the watercress darter to flourish.

But there is no such thing as a perfect world for urban beavers, especially when multiple government agencies get involved, not to mention politicians who love to play good, cheap golf.

Turns out, too many beavers are apparently a bad thing for the watercress darter inside the fragile ecosystem of Roebuck Golf Course.

"The beaver is not good for the darter because, No. 1, the darter lives in the bottom of the stream in and amongst the heavy-growing aquatic mosses and the watercress and the eelgrass," Howell said. "When beavers get in an area, they rip up all the vegetation off the bottom where the darters are living."

You thought life served you a raw deal? Think again. The beavers out at Roebuck got it the worst. Consider this life calculus: The beavers naturally create the environment for the watercress darter to live, and then get blamed for also destroying that environment, at which point the beavers have to die so the watercress darter can live.

"I guess the beavers caught the short end of the sticks, so to speak," Howell said. "It's the beavers that have broken the law, and not man."

Who killed the beavers?

U.S. Fish & Wildlife says it didn't do the deed, but the service has trained the city in proper beaver removal. The key: Take out the beavers without taking out the fish. Why that involved pitchforks remains unclear. The U.S. Fish & Wildlife's lead recovery biologist for the watercress darter said he has never heard of pitchforks being used to "lethally trap" beavers. A representative for Birmingham Park and Recreation initially said his department didn't know anything about the beaver kill, and since then hasn't returned follow-up calls requesting more information.

Together, it seems, the biologists, golfers and politicians outflanked the beavers. But only for a short while. Five days after the beaver kill, the water level at "Rogusta" flooded once again. There is no longer standing water on the No. 8 fairway, but it remains unplayable.

"For all the news stations that want to report fake news, this is real news coming to you live right out here at the park, Rogusta," Austin said. "We've got endangered species that we're trying to save and protect."

And not to mention golf handicaps.

Joseph Goodman is a senior reporter and columnist for Alabama Media Group. He's on Twitter @JoeGoodmanJr.