The rain in Martinez has been weak but constant,. Our friends near by in Napa have endured a deluge. Poor Tulocay creek where the beavers reside has seen more water than ever before
and Rusty and Robin were out bravely trying to see if they made it through. The dam was quickly topped, and the lodge soon followed. This is what the lodge looked like by afternoon.
Flooded lodge: Robin Ellison
Fortunately their lodge is anchored to a tree, but I certainly remember when ours was entirely swept away. With conditions like this you could see why a beaver might decide to just be a bank dweller after all. Here’s footage Rusty caught of a beaver cautiously grooming on top of the lodge. I’m starting to think that beavers save that spot for the pregnant matriarchs because someone looks a little round even for a beaver!
Beavers are nothing if not practical. They groom in the face of adversity in exactly the same way as your neighbor makes you a casserole after a tornado narrowly misses your barn. Yes it’s terrible and disruptive, but you still need to eat (stay dry). Looking at the way beavers adaptivley use the top of their lodge I’m reminded of folks escaping to the attic during Katrina, or chapter 9 of Winnie the Pooh.
“Now then, Pooh,” said Christopher Robin, “where’s your boat?”
“I ought to say,” explained Pooh as they walked down to the shore of the island, “that it isn’t just an ordinary sort of boat. Sometimes it’s a Boat, and sometimes it’s more of an Accident. It all depends.”
“Depends on what?”
“On whether I’m on the top of it or underneath it.”
One could worry about all that rushing water sweeping the beavers away like it nearly did pooh, but I’d advice everyone to watch this beaver, powerfully swimming against the roaring current. He or she doesn’t even look like it requires effort.
Robin just wrote after a trip to the pond this morning. The waters has receded, the lodge is standing, and all the beavers tucked safely inside. Well, we started with this post with 12th night, we might as well end with Alls Well that Ends Well.
Tune in next storm!
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Okay, I’m slowly learning things about my new toy. Double click to see the whole thing. Did you know you can fold down the corner to preview what’s on the next page? This took me way too long to finish but I’m inordinately pleased with it. It even has links to the resources described. I used up every inch of my ‘free’ 15 pages. You should try one, it would make a great baby album!
So yesterday the Swiss Canton of Thergau was declined compensation from the government for the woeful beaver damage it had sustained. They were seeking repayment for what they claimed were damages to roads and infrastructure from a population of what they describe as 500 beavers.
500 beavers!
Remember the entirety of Switzerland is only around 16,000 square miles (about twice the size of New Jersey). I can’t easily find the water stats for Thergau (which admitedly has the river Ther and some lakes) but the entirety of Canton is only 383 square miles. So imaging a population of 500 is a bit of a stretch. The parties somehow failed to convince the government with their persuasive argument of “We’ll like the beavers more if you pay us”.
I can’t imagine why.
The funny thing is that yesterday when the bad news broke, the paper ran the story with an accompanying photo of two otters. To which I helpfully pointed out that if their photos weren’t accurate how did we know the article was? And lo and behold today it has magically changed to a photo of a beaver.
Lucky for us I thought ahead enough to take a screen capture at the time.
(I may well have few really special uses in life, but saving embarrassing stories about beavers is definitely one of them.)
On to more bad news from Roosevelt Forest in Connecticut, where apparently public works installed beaver deceiver that never worked and now they have no choice but to kill the beavers.
Town trapping beavers to stop flooding in Roosevelt Forest
Some pesky beavers are causing some flooding problems for homes near Roosevelt Forest. So the commission that monitors the town’s only forest have voted to get rid of them, though the decision was far from easy.
Beaver traps have been placed in Pumpkin Ground Brook by Wild Things LLC after the Roosevelt Forest Commission voted last week to approve trapping and killing the beavers, which have caused a nuisance in the forest and threatened nearby homes.
.The town’s Public Works Department had installed a flow device, sometimes referred to as a “beaver deceiver,” into the dam to prevent flooding. But David said the beavers reinforced the dam by putting rocks and dirt in there. Public Works later breached the dam several times. But David said the beavers always fixed it.
“I’m very distraught that this was a solution to eliminate the beavers. I didn’t want to kill them,” said Roosevelt Forest Commission Chairman Bob David, one of five commission members who voted in favor of placing the traps.
At first glance this is the kind of story I hate most of all. A city that did the right thing, and installed a flow device – and a commisioner says he likes the beavers and wanted to keep them! But the darned thing didn’t work and now they have no choice but to hire WILD THINGS to kill them. Ugh.
But lets look closer, shall we? The flow device ‘that is sometimes called a beaver deceiver’ was installed by Public Works. Obviously they had zero input from Mike or Skip other wise they wouldn’t use that inaccurate language. The article implies it didn’t work because of ‘rocks’, what difference would that have made to our castor master? DPW probably made up the technology on their own and stuck in a pipe or a bit of hose. Which the beavers promptly plugged.
And as for the ‘distraught‘ Forest Commission chairman? I was quite moved by the quote last night but this is what I thought of when I reread this morning:
“I weep for you,” the Walrus said: “I deeply sympathize.” With sobs and tears he sorted out Those of the largest size, Holding his pocket-handkerchief Before his streaming eyes.
Well it’s not all bad news. Spring is nearly upon us and beavers everywhere are thinking it’s about dam time. Everywhere people are starting to see beavers break from their sleepy winter fog. This is from Art Wolinsky in New Hampshire who made his first beaver stakeout of the year and was lucky enough to capture FIVE swimming beavers on film and two tail slaps.
This makes me jealous and I would be heartbroken if watching it didn’t also make me SO VERY HAPPY.
The two-year-old beaver had managed to squeeze the entire front half of his little body under the fence, but misjudged just how large his bottom was,a spokesperson for the Nature Protection Society said.
But once he was halfway through, he had no way of reversing back out and lay trapped under the metal mesh until passersby found him in the morning.
The concerned strollers alerted the Nature Protection Society, who in turn got the fire department involved.
Wanting to take no risks with the little creature’s precious derrière, the firemen cut the fence open using wire cutters, eventually freeing the rodent who scurried unscathed into a nearby pond.
Beavers are a protected species in Germany. Despite long being threatened with extinction, they are making a comeback, appearing in ever growing numbers on the outskirts of larger cities.
Farmer McGregor had dutifully fenced off his crops to keep hungry beavers out, but this one pulled a Peter Cottontail and tried to go under the fence. Unfortunately for him he wasn’t wearing any breeches to wriggle out of and he was trapped for good until some nice firemen came and cut him free! I bet with all the fears of Trump’s ascent mirroring the rise of the Nazis we never exactly thought about Germany as the land of compassion, but in this instance, it is! Beavers are protected there. .
Any enterprising child who put his head through the bars in the banister or between the slats of a fence and couldn’t get it out knows why this beaver did it. With me it was the mysterious hole in the right arm of my high chair, which I had to sit in a while because there were more children than chairs. After the first year or so of the arrangement its considerable mystery wore off, and I wondered ‘what would happen if I put my thumb in there?’ Maybe I thought like this beaver that I would find special treats and all the others would be jealous they hadn’t ever tried it.
I just found a stuck thumb that would not pull free even after everyone had eaten dinner. Luckily with many hours and vasoline we were able to extricate said thumb without the firemen.
Of course it’s silly to say that one beaver’s rump is problematically large but all the others are trim as can be.Beavers have a certain shape and it ain’t sleek. But this fun article does give me an excuse to post this again, which has already made my morning and hopefully will brighten yours.
Yesterday a video of this beaver was posted on the Putah Creek Wildlife Stewards page grooming in the middle of the day. Obviously all this rain had flooded them out of their den and they were adapting as best they could, Robin saw it and wrote that the beaver looked mighty fat and pregnant, and my initial reaction was that all beavers look tubby when bending over to groom, but I decided to check the date on that old pregnant beaver photo Cheryl took in 2008.
March 18. Pretty dam close.
Then Ale and I chatted about the what the beaver was doing and why mom would be more worried about water in the lodge at this time of year, especially if she was expecting kits any minute. Prompting him to ask me if I’d be interested in speaking at their conference in April – although he’d have ask the organizers. Could I tell him anything about my beaver credentials?
Hahaha.
I must say it was weird to be asked because I never, ever am. Because most of the people who have contact with me already know about the Martinez beavers or the website or the festival or the papers or whatever. I did my best to explain and get over being befuddled because I’d like to help those folks out. The details about beaver pregnancy spurred me to make this:
I was happy to learn to do a two page spread so that no white borders appear. It’s trickier than it looks! Actually, the time of year could explain what Robin say yesterday at the pond too, in Napa. Two kits feeding cheerfully and looking for all the world that mom had told them to GO PLAY and leave her alone. Looks like they’re doing an excellent job stripping that bark! Nice to see the two kits doing well after the winter storms.
Wouldn’t you know, in the middle of working I got a call from Suzi Eszterhas who I had asked a question about using urban beaver photos for the chapter. She said the rules meant she couldn’t until they were published but she enthusiastically agreed to donate another set of books for this year’s silent auction at the festival, plus the soon to be published rehab books! Hooray! Thanks so much Suzi!
