Whew! The world is entirely devoid of beaver news today so we can talk. Thank goodness. Come on in and close the door. I wanted to share a theory about beaver behavior and the snippiness we’ve been seeing lately at the beaver ponds. We know a new adult has returned, and clearly that makes a difference to the colony. But this weekend I realized it wasn’t the new adult beaver that’s causing it.
Our beaver born last summer is almost a year old now, and we can still tell him apart by his size most of the time. Junior, we refer to him as for ease of reference. The altercation I got on film made me understand that he was involved. And as I was uploading I had a moment of audio and no video so I actually HEARD it – the unmistakably kit whine. When I saw it again I noticed that Junior goes over to the big beaver to see what he’s eating, and the adult makes a charge for him, and at that moment the whine occurs.
Did you hear it? It’s such terrible audio its hard to discern. But right around 2 seconds a whining sound comes seems to pierce the train sound. We very very rarely hear whining from beavers when they get older. Is seems to be saying “don’t attack, I’m just a kid, remember?”. His whining is maybe intended to deescalate the adult, and it apparently works. I thought when I first saw this that we were viewing two beavers trying to decide hierarchy, but now I think that what’s happening is that Junior is still acting like a baby, asking for food –
but he’s NOT the baby anymore.
Having a younger sibling in the colony changes everyone’s role, but Junior’s most of all. And he might be the last to know. The day is gone when he can come to the table and steal the treat from indulgent parents with impunity. It’s a new world. He is partly ready for this new world, he does mudding every day and almost always carries a stick when he comes from the den, but he hasn’t forgotten his childish ways, always swims towards mom when he sees her, and expects everyone to share.
Alternating between kit and yearling, Junior is in the beaver equivalent of middle school.
When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.
