Waiting for tomorrow’s rain I am anxiously reminded that our beavers have a hard winter ahead of them, full of washouts, high flows and dam failure. Without mom and the other yearlings to help out, all the hard labor will fall on Dad and our two year old. The kits will get ample on-the-job-training i’m sure, but they won’t be much use in repairing and maintaining three dams.
I try and remember, in the early days of our beavers, there was just mom and dad and no offspring to help them. True, they only had one dam but it was a five foot megadam and they did just fine on their own. They had more cottonwood and willow to chop down for building material, but they didn’t have any kids to help them. It’s hard to remember that long ago, but there used to be cottonwood on Castro between Marina vista and Escobar. It was the first thing the beavers took out.
Mom and Dad gathered all the materials alone, chewed all the trees and the sticks alone, rebuilt the dam when the city took it out three times alone, and mudded alone. At the same time that they were building a lodge and starting a family. That must mean that Dad and the two year old will be able to manage.
I’m curious where their emphasis will be this year. Last year it was definitely the secondary dam by the footbridge that got repaired first and foremost. The primary dam seemed less important, and the downstream dam a dim afterthought. Will this year change? It seems like they are often sleeping downstream of the primary dam. So maybe the primary dam won’t even be ‘primary’ anymore. How will our little beavers learn without their mom?
Thank goodness beaver families are tight knit and there will be lots of opportunities to learn the trade with Dad and GQ. I have at least three years’ worth of memories of being worried for the beavers in the hard rain, the first year was the worst because I didn’t yet know what they were capable of. One of most vivid occurred the winter after the first batch of kits were born. I was particularly worried they wouldn’t be able to swim in the very fast current that is suddenly visited upon Alhambra Creek with all the runoff. I had wandered down to the dam with a raincoat and umbrella, anxiously watching the old lodge for when the beavers came out. The kits, as usual were first, which terrified me. I imagined them being swooped up in a torrent and whisked out to sea, unable to swim back to the safety of their lodge and family. Two popped bravely out of the lodge and were immediately rushed in tandem about 10 feet downstream in a matter of seconds before giving a solid SLAP of both tails.
Beaver swear words!
After this moment of protest, they turned about and started swimming, managing against the current just fine, much, much better than I could do. I realized that they were uniquely equipped for their aquatic life and stopped panicking about their washing out to sea. After I was done being nervous, the whole event made me laugh. I always remember that moment when I saw the kits discover that the world was different than they expected, voiced their strong objections to the change and then wholly adapt and get on with their business.
We should all be so lucky.
