A million years ago when I was employed I had a very popular bird feeder on my deck. It was visited by chickadees, nuthatches, woodpeckers and all manner of finches. When I describe it as ‘popular’ I mean by the birds of course. Not the humans. Not the aged curmudgeon did taxes in the office directly below me. He complained about the bird noises and droppings and leftover seed shells.

I wanted to keep him happy, and keep him from complaining to the landlord so for a period of time I was able to get Jon to clean his porch every week. Swept the seed away and rubbed off any droppings. It was a horrible job. The curmudgeon would fold his arms and watch angrily while Jon worked growling if he missed a spot.

One time the grumpy Gus pointed to a pile of pollen on the side of his porch and said. “Get that! All that green stuff, It was never here before!” Which of course it had been. Every May for as long as he rented that office and even before. Because it was from the pine trees who coned off pollen in the windy spring days and made everyone sneeze. He had never seen it before because he never looked at his porch until he started looking for the problems the birds were causing.

It was then that I realized he was looking with different eyes. The exact same kind of eyes people glare thru when beavers are being watched suspiciously on their property. Which is what I thought of when I read this article.

Bay Lake and Beavers: Coming to Terms with Wildlife

Living in a rural location inevitably means having a relationship with Mother Nature. And sometimes that relationship gets complicated. Bay Lake residents have been immersed, literally, in just how complicated it can be to live side by side with beavers.

Beavers have lived in the area for many years. Bud Ulsh, who was born in 1933 and has lived nearby his whole life, remembers hiking around Bay Lake and seeing evidence of beavers at least 20 years ago. Bruce Wagner, a division manager with Pierce County Planning and Public Works Maintenance and Operations, said that beavers began to cause significant problems at Bay Lake in 2011. That year the county placed a device known as a beaver deceiver to prevent beavers from blocking the culvert under Delano Road that allows outflow to Mayo Cove to prevent the road from flooding.

Resident Teresa Ives, who has lived on the lake for 15 years, said the device just seemed to encourage the beavers to build dams around it. The north end of the lake was once a narrow 20 feet across and now is close to 200 feet.

Oooh this is starting to get good. Settling in for a game of “Beaver Telephone”

A number of residents reported that the lake level has risen at least two and a half feet in the last few years. Docks that were above water are now submerged. Ives estimated that she has lost about an acre of her 7-acre property to rising water levels, and access to her floating dock was under water in mid-May.

Richard Miller has lived on Bay Lake since 2007. When he planned his dock, he kayaked around the lake to see what others had done. He built a floating structure with a stationary dock for access that was higher than any others on the lake. That dock, already replaced once, was under water in May.

Miller said there used to be some variation in the water level from summer to winter, with about 10 feet of beach in the summer. “I built stairs to get to the beach,” he said, “but now the beach is gone and the water meets the stairs.” He calculated the size of the lake at about 128 acres. Every foot of additional depth adds 400,000 gallons of water to the volume of the lake. “That’s at least one and a half million gallons more water now than a few years ago.”

Three complaining old biddies that blame beavers for EVERYTHING!!! Is tha all? Can’t you find anymore out there?

Reactions to the effects of the beavers have varied. Lee, whose house was most at risk, said, “Beaver need to be classified as nuisance animals. If they can hire a helicopter to shoot a wolf for killing cattle, they should help us get rid of the beavers. I am on the verge of losing my home.”

Yeah that’s what I’m talking about. A really outrageous request to be able to shoot them like wolves from helicopter! Why just shoot them? Why not hang them?

Ahh ain’t humanity great.

Stay tuned for our next installment when the creek dries up and they complain about all that stinking mud in their front yards!

The good part is that this complaining lake is in Washington state so if anyplace on god’s green earth is equipped to deal with these castor complaints from the peanut gallery, they are.