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Hot dam! This orphaned beaver is an internet sensation

NY-based "Beave" has more than 15.3M viral video views on TikTok.

There’s a new four-legged internet star — and it’s not a dog or cat.

Meet Beave, an orphaned beaver in New York, whose adorable escapades while in wildlife rehab are blowing up the internet.

“No one expected it,” owner Nancy Coyne, 46, told The Post about the buck-toothed sensation, who boasts more than 523,000 followers on TikTok. The Orange County-based wildlife rehabilitation expert adopted Beave from a good Samaritan who found the roly-poly rodent by a road at 3 weeks old. She suspected that his parents might have been killed by poachers because adults rarely take baby beavers — known as kits — out of their dwellings when they’re that small.

Despite the two years required to rear a beaver, the kindhearted New Yorker ultimately decided to keep him, because the animal sanctuaries were closed due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Coyne’s daughter thought up the idea of documenting Beave’s progress on TikTok — an endeavor her mom initially assumed would be “boring.”

Today, the now-9-month-old beaver’s home movies regularly rack up hundreds of thousands of views. The cute clips depict Beave doing everything from snuggling a stuffed beaver to MacGyvering makeshift lodges — beavers’ signature stick homes — out of toilet plungers, running shoes and other household items.

In the most viral video to date with over 15.3 million views, Coyne can be seen letting a sopping wet Beave inside the house like one would a golden retriever.

@beaverbabyfurrylove

Beave sense of smell and home is so strong that even up at the Lake House without a doggie door he still knows where to return. #InteriorDesign #fyp

♬ original sound – Beave

It might seem like nonstop fun, but rehabilitating a baby beaver has proven challenging for his adoptive parent.

“He’s got a ton of training that he’s gonna have to go through in the next two years,” explained Coyne in a Q&A on her YouTube channel.

@beaverbabyfurrylove

Beave does love exploring all the bathrooms and confiscating the plungers. #FoodTikTok #fyp #growupwithme #JingleJangleWithMe #VansCheckerboardDay

♬ original sound – Beave

In order to prepare him for life in the wild, Coyne had to take the place of an adult beaver, who teach their babies everything during their first two years. This meant showing Beave how to swim, dive and even eat — behaviors that may seem instinctive but are actually learned from parents.

“All of it he picked up by mimicking me,” Coyne told The Post of his training, noting that Beave “wouldn’t even get into water until I got in.” His surrogate mother helped acclimate him to his aquatic lifestyle by spending the summer swimming with her fur baby.

Beave’s exploits have taken the internet by storm.@beaverbabyfurrylove/TikTok

For food training, meanwhile, Coyne would pretend to munch on wood and dandelions and then give them to Beave so he could follow suit. We’re just thankful that she didn’t have to demonstrate bursting through a frozen pond.

It appears that the interspecies instruction has paid off — as evidenced by multiple clips of the busy little beaver frolicking in the water and gnawing on a stick like a corn cob.  

Coyne told The Post that Beave will be officially ready to leave his current lodge — most likely in 2022 — when he “starts to show aggression” and “distance himself” from mom. “That’s a really nice indicator that we’re doing something right,” explained the beaver rehab expert.

After a “soft release” into a nearby pond, during which Beave will be supervised by Coyne, he will finally depart for real.

Much like seeing one’s child off to college, the moment will likely be bittersweet for his loving guardian.

“A lot of people on TikTok don’t believe I’m going to be able to release him,” said Coyne, fondly, “but that’s why we do this.”

“We don’t do this to keep them or domesticate them or think that they’re gonna live with us,” she said. “We do this to get to the end goal, which is to release.”

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