We’re off to kaiser to give my very special immune system a third-times-a-charm dose of moderna, but I’ll leave you with this remarkable photo.
Raise your hand if you remember.
Month: September 2021
One LUCKY BASTARD!
That’s what I’d call him, Problem is he’s in Maine and all the smart people are on jury duty this week, or something. He simply can’t find a SOUL who know’s what he should do except kill em,
Battle with the yard-wrecking beavers takes an unexpected turn
Nobody really wants a family of beavers to take up residence in their backyard. At least, that’s what I’m coming to understand after just such a thing happened to me. The responses I’ve received since sharing my tale of woe a week ago have largely fallen into the vein of “trap ’em,” “whack ’em” or “hire someone to trap ’em and whack ’em.”
Of course, most of those responses came from a group of my friends who are a bit more unforgiving toward unwanted wildlife invasions than your group of pals might be.
A couple of others reached out to tell me that they had other ideas. The basic flavor of those responses: When life gives you beavers, make — well — arts and crafts, I suppose.
The article is written by John Holyoke of the Bangor daily news. He’s a sports and outdoor columnist so you would think he would appreciate having better fishing and duck hunting on his property, not to mention clean water and fire protection. But what do I know?
But back to my current beaver issue. Since my tree didn’t fall on the house, I’m reluctant to call the situation a “problem.” Yet.
After noticing the fallen tree and its beaver-chewed neighbor, I deployed a trail camera recently and have been eagerly waiting for more evidence of beaver activity that I could share with you. Unfortunately, according to my less-than-scientific beaver-o-meter, it doesn’t appear that the still-standing tree has taken any more mega-bites over the past eight days.
Or, I guess, I meant to say “fortunately.” Not that this tree is long for the world, mind you — Bucky has already reduced it to a leaning tower of birch that (again, fortunately) is tilted away from the house.
Still, I knew you’d love to see a video of my (current) nemesis (see also: red squirrels, moose, deer, et al.), so I had hoped to have had better luck.
That’s not to say that I had no luck at all, mind you.
I did get a great video of another critter visiting the scene of the beaver’s property crime. And when I first watched the video on a small thumbnail screen, I was quite certain that I’d captured footage of the world’s most acrobatic and agile beaver.
Unfortunately (or is it fortunately?), my visitor was only a gray squirrel. And fortunately (or is it unfortunately?), the squirrel showed no interest in helping the beaver chew down the rest of my tree.
Poor man doesn’t even know where to put a camera, Do you have any water on your property? maybe a dam or a lodge? If all you have is a single tree that got chewed I’d say too bad, all you have is a beaver drive-by which gives you time to read up on how lucky you’ll be if they ever come back. i have just the book.
Two days until the launch. Just in time for heidi’s birthday and no, I’m not kidding. I’m ready are you?
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2 days to launch – Droughts & difficulty modes preview
on September 15 – exactly two days from now – Timberborn Early Access begins. To keep you up to date with what to expect from the game in its new incarnation, we’ll be counting down to the release date with daily previews on different aspects of our beaver city-builder.
Today, let’s look at Timberborn’s core feature, droughts, and how they affect the game’s flow and difficulty. Because you know, we’ll have different difficulty modes at launch. We were planning to add that later, but since it was often requested, we moved it up on our priority list.
Not only that, we’re giving you an option to create a custom difficulty . You can choose how many beavers you start with, how much water and food they need, how many resources they have at the beginning of the game and how long the droughts will be. If you want to, you can make it an ultimate sandbox experience, or an ultimate hardcore desert world.
No no no, you’re saying. I can hear you. Heidi made this up. She’s did some kind of graphic and now she’s pretending this is real. But she’s not. It’s totally fucking real.
It’s post-apocalypse now, which means the drought (previously: “dry season”) eventually comes. The strength of water sources on the map begins to fade and after a while, the water sources “turn off” completely while the evaporation continues. The river beds gradually dry up and with them – the surrounding areas. Fields and forests turn yellow and will wither unless you have a way of preventing that with a clever combination of dams, floodgates, irrigation towers, canals, water dumps etc.
If you do not prepare for a drought properly, you will also end up with useless pumps and water wheels, so unless there’s a lot of water in the tanks and you have alternative power sources, your population might wither too, if you catch our drift.
Here’s a note for our demo players – we’re evil and we made the second drought in the demo a little too severe on purpose. That’s not what will happen to you in the normal game. Sorry, not sorry.
You would think i made this up. Especially the dialogue where the beavers reflect on the end of the stupid humans who caused a world that they could not survive. But i did not. it’s real.
And it launches on wednesday!
This article was so befuddling I am still scratching my head. There is very little it that makes sense to me, but maybe that’s just because I’m not from Minnesota.
Beaver dam slows water from Lake Ocheda drawdown
A beaver dam on the Ocheyedan River may slow water from the drawdown of Lake Ocheda on its way to Lake Bella, but it won’t stop it, and the dam provides other advantages too. The drawdown, meant to kill rough fish and improve water quality, started Wednesday.
Now just in case you’re wondering ROUGH fish aren’t fish that have had a difficult upbringing. They are the fish that people don’t feel like catching. Lucky for lazy fishermen in the state DNR exerts a great deal of energy to kill them off. It won’t happen as fast this year because of the beaver dam, which in their generosity they are letting stay for now.
“We’ll probably be dropping the (water) level a bit slower this year because of the beaver dam,” said Dan Livdahl, administrator of the Okabena-Ocheda Watershed District, who visited the official, human-built Lake Ocheda Dam to pull its stop logs Wednesday.
The beaver dam, which was discovered last spring on OOWD land, is about four feet tall, covered with vegetation and spans the entire width of the Ocheyedan River. Because the beaver dam creates wetlands water storage, holding back floodwater and reducing the amount of sediment running into the lake, the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources and the OOWD together opted to leave the unofficial construction as it is.
You don’t say.
The half-foot drawdown will be the second consecutive drawdown for Lake Ocheda, after a previous drawdown in 2020-2021 failed to fully achieve its goals. That winter just wasn’t cold enough to kill all the rough fish that stir up sediment and destroy vegetation in the lake, harming water quality. Because of this year’s drought, the nutrients left in the lake from the dead fish weren’t flushed from the lake either, Livdahl said.
This time, the hope is that Minnesota “experiences more typical winter weather” and the fish winterkill is more intense, a Watershed District press release noted.
How confusing is that? A department of natural resources that is worried it didn’t kill enough fish last winter and crossing it’s fingers that more will kick it this year. I guess i can understand wanting to kill off some invasives like carp but it’s hard to think of anything that would kill them without harming the other fish. also anything else in the ecosystem.
How exactly do these rough fish destroy the vegetation in the lake? I mean isn’t there any species of game fish that EATs rough fish? I was pleasantly surprised to find this article from april.
DNR pushes for new respect of Minnesota’s rough fish
“These are fish we need,” Parsons said. “There’s still a perception that if it’s not a sunfish or another game fish, it’s a carp.”
Fisheries managers of yore helped plant the culture of disrespect by poisoning so-called “rough fish” to rid them from waterways. Myths have grown up around some species that they stunt walleye production.
With the exception of common carp, a destructive, nonnative fish still targeted by the DNR for mass removal from shallow lakes, nongame species have important roles in the ecosystem, the agency is teaching. Redhorse and other suckers are a vital food source for game fish. Buffalo eat unwanted algae. Gar and dogfish (bowfin) are among the few fish that eat carp. Minnows thrive by eating suckers’ eggs. There’s also growing interest around the country in targeting certain native, nongame species for table fare and catch-and-release sport.
Yeah that’s what I’d think. Good luck getting that to catch on though. It seems like there has been a lot of stupid running rampant in your state for a long time. Suddenly understanding more about the blowing up beaver dams to help trout thing.
Our good friend photographer Patrick Page took a visit to fairfield last night and was rewarded with several beaver sightings. I particularly like this photo.
Apparently a beaver thought he was getting a little too close for comfort because he also got this.
This was an interesting interview. I’d be very surprised indeed to learn that beavers don’t build dams do so for any reason than they don’t need to because there’s enough water already or their aren’t materials available. Dams help kits stay safe, But they aren’t possible everywhere. Beavers work hard but they usually don’t waste effort uselessly.
Humans have been relocating beavers for a century. We are only now learning some of the effects.
When we think of beavers many of us think of the dams they build, but along the Oregon coast, some just aren’t doing that. Little research has been done to explain why, but it is a part of a larger story of relocation and reintroduction of Oregon’s state animal. Beavers have a long history within the United States, and over the years, the animals have been extensively relocated. They’ve been moved by bus, train and even parachuted out of planes from Wyoming to New York. Oregon State University’s Dr. Clint Epps and Vanessa Petro wanted to know what genetic effect all that relocation has had on these large rodents. They join us to share the results from their latest study on coastal beavers.
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