Am I the only one that gets a kind of tingly feeling when a paper runs a photo like this? Colorado Summit Daily has a fairly nice glimpse this morning of beavers-getting-ready-for-winter.
Beavers are active this time of the year!
My friend Terese Keil, property manager for Trappers Villas, called me the other day to tell me a bunch of landscaping aspen had been chewed down literally overnight by beavers.
A call to Fish and Wildlife confirmed several reports of beaver activity in Summit County and loss of trees on properties. Apparently, they are busy building dams and lodges in preparation for winter. The advice was to protect the trees with wire mesh along the bottom of the trunks.
Beavers are prolific engineers and builders, and prefer to work mostly at night; their specially adapted incisor teeth and powerful lower jaw muscles allow them to chew down trees. Their teeth never stop growing, and their four front teeth are self-sharpening. They have been seen to work as a team to carry a large piece of timber.
The author Joanne Stolen is a retired microbiology professor from Rutgers – now turned artist and living in Breckenridge, CO. This is a mere 2.5 hour drive from Sherri Tippie so I’m going to imagine that if they aren’t friends already they soon will be. In the mean time I have been perusing the linocuts on her art website and noticing there wasn’t a beaver yet. I’m guessing she’ll be inspired to fix that oversight very soon!
And remember this Wednesday I will be talking at the Rossmoor Nature Association about our beavers and their effect on our creek. You know you have friends there, so see if you can get an invitation. I’d love to see some familiar faces.
Oh and if you need provoking after a weekend that was just too relaxing go read this morning’s whimper from Mississippi where they are bemoaning the fact that the federal governement (which they mostly don’t believe in) is now only going to pay for half the cost of killing beavers with the USDA and isn’t that a shame? I mean its not like the state needs the water or the wooducks or the trout or the filtration. Obviously those beavers have to be killed because flow devices never work and Uncle Sam needs to do it!
Remind me why I pay taxes again.
