June 13, 1998
Here is what (with a little editing) I wrote in January of 1994 as my Winter Holiday Letter for that year. If you've already read it, skip ahead to Beaver Battles Continued.
Although there are certainly more important events both in my personal life and in the world, I very well may remember this winter as the Winter of the Beavers.
When, a few years ago, our neighborhood decided to build a recreational pond rather than a swimming pool, my main argument against the pool was that pools require daily maintenance to keep them healthy and usable. Now, probably in retribution, I find myself dealing daily with pond maintenance.
Nearly every morning for the past couple of weeks I have walked the quarter of mile through the woods to the pond, wondering what mischief the beavers might have perpetrated during the night.
This morning I found one of the more promising of the pond-side trees, a young beech about 5 inches in diameter, fallen across the perimeter path, its upper branches in the water, and telltale wood chips fallen along the trunk in little piles below freshly chewed conical rings. I also found, as I've come to expect, leaves, mud and sticks clogging much of the circular grating over the 2-ft diameter standpipe that ultimately determines the pond's water-level.
And, as has become a daily ritual, I used a garden rake with a jury-rigged extended handle to remove the sticks and unclog the grating.
In this way I have been able to bring down the level of the pond about an inch a day -- and every night the beavers have re-stabilized the flow at the new level. Now, instead of the surface being two feet above the stand-pipe level, the pond is within a few inches of "normal". (When the pond was at its highest stabilized level a few weeks ago, the diving boards looked from a distance as if they were on stilts, with the dock under four inches of water.)
In order to achieve the highest stabilized level, the beavers had not only restricted the flow through the stand-pipe, but they had also begun damming up the spillway, a forty-foot-wide depression next to the dock area. (The spillway is designed to protect the dam from flooding and erosion during 100-year floods.)
These days I'm finding the daily beaver battle interesting -- even a little fun. I can almost imagine adding the grate-cleaning ritual permanently to my morning exercise routine.
And although I've mourned a few of the trees that they've taken, for the most part the beavers have chewed mostly on scrub, opening up the woods in a quite pleasing way.
We have begun putting chicken wire around the most important trees, but there are hundreds of beautiful trees around the pond -- so we're not sure how we will react if the beavers start taking out the really nice ones -- or if I grow tired of the beaver battle and they raise the level over the dock again.
I guess we will have to look into beaver traps. I wonder if beavers are stupid enough to walk into humane traps? They seem so ingenious. And I wonder how they would do if we took them to the 10 acre beaver pond a mile back in the woods?
My beaver battles continued that Winter into the Spring. Each morning I would trudge the quarter-mile through the woods to find the standpipe grate clogged with leaves, mud and sticks, and the pond level rising. Each morning I would rake off the beaver debris so the pond could regain the level we humans preferred.
Finally, growing weary of this routine, I decided to try something different. I constructed a rather precarious bridge out to the standpipe; and then, with metal fence posts and chicken wire, erected a 3-foot high fence around the standpipe. I hoped that the fence would prevent the beavers from slopping their leaves, mud and sticks onto the grating -- and that I would be relieved of my daily grate-cleaning duties.
Although my hopes were ultimately realized, I had to endure the suspense of seeing them slowly, day-by-day, build a volcano-like wall around the fence, raising the pond level to within 3 inches of covering the dock. Then they stopped.
For what reason they stopped I really do not know. I'd like to think that the beavers decided that I was indeed a formidable foe, and that they should compromise. It turns out, however, that there were a couple of other events that may have had at least as much, if not more, impact than my fence building activities.
A few neighbors had decided that humane traps were the answer. Such a trap was supposed to catch beavers without hurting them. The idea was that that they could then be relocated to an area where they would be more welcome. The neighbors called in an "expert" who helped them set up a number of traps around the pond's perimeter. Unfortunately, the traps only caught one beaver that could be (and was) relocated. Another beaver was drowned when a trap became dislodged and fell into the water. And, most unfortunately, a great blue heron happened into a trap and was injured so badly that even an emergency trip to the Weyer's Cave sanctuary was insufficient to save it.
Another neighbor took more aggressive actions. His first attempts involved the use of a pellet gun. (Our neighborhood covenants do not allow real firearms.) He would sit up in the evening on the pond shore and shoot pellets at the beavers as they swam about. These annoyances had absolutely no effect.
His next attempt may have been more effective. He rammed a 2 inch plastic tube down through the top of the beaver lodge into its heart. Then he dropped lighted cherry bombs down the tubes. Soon after such salvos, he would notice beavers swimming out in the pond and moving about as if they were trying to shake off the effects of his barrage.
The beavers didn't leave then, but it was about that time that they stopped building up their volcano wall around my fence.
And then, that Summer, they did leave.
Beaver Battles: The Sequel
Four years later (Winter, 1997-98) the beavers -- probably not the same beavers of course -- returned.In November they resumed their work on the standpipe fence, building a volcano-like wall and raising the pond level gradually, about a quarter inch a day, until the pond level was no longer acceptable, with perimeter bridges submerged and the dock nearly under water.
I began again my daily battle, though this time it was much easier since I had the bridge to the standpipe and the wire fence around it. It took but a few minutes each morning to undo their nocturnal damming. It was only storms and those occasions when I was away on business trips when the beavers and mother nature colluded to defeat me and raise the level above the perimeter bridges. (For some reason, they didn't this time ever raise the level above the dock.)
Finally, a couple of months ago, I decided that another compromise was in order. Instead of keeping up the battle, I raised the height of the perimeter bridges. I decided to let go and see if the beavers would let go, too.
They did. Why they did is a complete mystery -- except that it happened at the same time that their babies were probably being birthed. I wonder what will happen next year?
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