It's a beaver tale of a story that local restaurateur Matt Jones calls a once in a lifetime experience.
Jones and friend Jesse Parente were on their way to the movies in Barrie's south end around 9 p.m. Friday night when traffic was stopped by a beaver on Commerce Park Drive at Bryne Dr.
The pair initially thought the animal was a ground hog but closer inspection revealed that tell-tale beaver tail of Canada's national symbol.
Parente was visiting Barrie for the weekend from New York City and both men were pretty impressed.
"How Canadian is that? To see an actual, live beaver," said Jones. "It was pretty awesome. I've never seen one before."
The beaver had tucked itself under another driver's truck behind a tire and would've been squashed if the driver moved.
"You cant go anywhere. You're gonna kill this beaver," Jones told the driver, who patiently waited the ten minutes it took to nudge the animal out of harm's way. "Finally we got it to move a little bit in between his truck so that he could actually slowly drive over it."
But the beaver was still in the road. Another driver stopped and offered an ice scraper to Parente.
In the meantime, Jones had called animal control and got an an answering machine so he called Barrie Police.
An officer showed up while he was still on the phone with the dispatcher.
Their rescue efforts made the beaver angrier, said Jones, and it appeared to be an eager beaver to fight.
"We tried poking it with the ice scraper and then he attacked me. He came and tried to bite me. He was vicious. He grabbed the bottom of my pant leg. I was like, okay. I'll let you try," Jones said he told the officer.
"He had his little baton. Jesse had the ice scraper. It took a while. He didn't want to go anywhere. He was flapping his tail and took a lunge at the cop too, same as he did with me."
Finally after about twenty minutes, they got the animal off the road and back into the parking lot. Jones and Parente went to the movie and later learned the beaver had wandered into the road a second time.
Officers returned, armed with advice from animal control, boxed up the herbivorous mammal and released it into the wild.
"It was totally random. I don't know where he was trying to go. I'm just glad he didn't get hit," said Jones, who described the beaver as 'like a big raccoon.'
Jones, the owner of Barrie's iconic Midway Diner, admits he was unnerved by the irate animal when it lunged at him.
"He had the bottom of my sweat pants in his mouth. It didn't break the skin, thank god. Have you seen the teeth? They can chop down trees," Jones said.
"He was slapping his tail. That's what they do when they're in distress and sure enough, he kept slapping his tail on the pavement. When he lunged at me he sort of like did a little growling noise. I was freaked out. I'm not ashamed to admit it."
His friend from New York City was thrilled with the close encounter of a Canuck kind.
"I gave him the full Canadian experience," joked Jones. "What are the odds? Coming to Canada and seeing a beaver. Next to seeing Wayne Gretzky it's truly Canadian."
In the end, Jones was just glad the beaver was moved to safety.
"My biggest fear was that we were going to leave the theatre and see this thing dead, splashed on the road," he said.
"I'm glad that it had a happy ending."
