OMG I’m fixed I’m fixed! Said no cat ever! But dam it’s good to be back. This was an interesting post this morning from a blog in New Mexico that caught my attention, Someone exclaiming that they just got their first beaver photo because “beavers are so hard to photograph”.

Um…

Beavers are hard to photograph in the exact same way as it’s hard to see your mail delivered every day. It just seems to show up in your mailbox when you get home from work mysteriously! But if you learn your mailman’s routine, and wait with a camera when they are likely to show up, you will almost always get a photo. Mystery solved.

There are many, many animals in the Bosque. Most people, even those who spend a lot of time there do not see a fraction of what is possible. Despite years of looking, this is the first picture I have gotten of a Beaver. The far more visible muskrat is smaller and has a thin tail. While beavers are famous as engineers and keystones in their ecosystem, they can often do things wrong. This youngster is trying to build a lodge, but has chosen a section of the ditch that is being dredged right now.

Well he’s right about the muskrat tail. And he’s right about this being a youngster. But that’s as far as it goes. Beavers rarely do things ‘wrong’. Do you mean wrong for humans? Or for what a human being wants any particular moment? I’m assuming that beaver isn’t building a ‘lodge’ but rather a dam that is what prompted the dredging you speak of.

Hmm those look like lodges in the drained stream.  Those lodges are horrible and I can’t even imagine that they withstand such a draining. That looks like a major crisis – 5 alarm fire for beavers. No water in sight. Maybe that’s why you finally saw one. Things are critical.  The story is that the stream gets too full of cattails so they have to dredge them of all the silt they collect or it will use up all the water and muck up the streams.

Um. Okay. That seems kind of crazy to me. And it’s very bad for beavers, whom NM needs like life support. But what do I know. He  is wrong about photographing beavers though. I’m sure about that.