Nearly nine months after she was rescued, Beaver, a retired sled dog who got loose from Bangor International Airport and spent close to a month on the run in the city, is the subject of her own children’s book.
“Black Bear Goes to Bangor to Find Beaver,” written and illustrated by Denise Lawson, the Virginia-based dog rescuer who rescued Beaver, came out last month. It’s the latest in a series of children’s books Lawson has written about Black Bear, a sled dog who goes on adventures across the country.
Lawson tells the story of how Beaver, a retired sled dog, was on her way to Bangor to what was supposed to be a permanent home with a local family. As she was getting off the plane at the airport, however, Beaver got loose on Feb. 21, 2021, and spent the next 23 days running all over town, eluding attempts to catch her.
Bangor residents were captivated by the tale of Beaver, starting a Facebook page dedicated to sharing sightings of the fleet-footed dog. In the end, however, Lawson, who had arranged the adoption, came up to Bangor from Virginia to try to catch the dog herself, going so far as to spend a night camped outside in the Fairmount neighborhood, grilling salmon and hot dogs to attract Beaver by the smell.
Once she was caught, Lawson brought Beaver back to Virginia so she could recuperate and heal. Beaver was then re-adopted early in the summer to a new family in upstate New York. Another Facebook group, Friends of Beaver the Sled Dog, is still active, and shows Beaver enjoying her life with her new family.
In “Black Bear Goes to Bangor to Find Beaver,” Lawson tells a lightly fictionalized, rhyming tale of how Black Bear, the sled dog who is a character in all her books, tries to find Beaver, with the help of some other sled dog friends.
The book is available locally at The Not So Empty Nest in Bangor, and online wherever books are sold.