If a tree falls in the forest…

I wrote earlier about “Inscrutable Beaver Behavior” where the beavers do something that either doesn’t make sense or something purposeful whose goal is not yet clear to us. A good recent example is the tree mass nibble at the primary dam, resulting in the taking of the largest willow that fell to the bank.

A savvy observer of beaver behavior (like any one of us) would expect that tree to be sliced and diced by all the family members at a castor-thanksgiving feast. That’s what happened the night they took down the big cottonwood by the corp yard last summer. That’s what happened to the big willow dad removed from the Annex the winter before that. Still, since this tree has found its way to the horizontal position, the beavers seem to have lost interest in it. No one has nibbled on it at all.

It fell onto the bank but obviously some human with a fuzzy understanding of the fact that beavers actually walk onto the bank, worked to push it in the water. That meant it fell on the flow device and was in danger of being removed by city staff and being a “wasted willow”. Jon went down on sunday and cut the heaviest part away, so that at least the top of the tree would likely remain in the water.

When will the feeding begin? Who knows. Will the beavers get to eat the willow before the leaves lose their luster? Who knows. Was the entire tree nibble triggered by the drop in temperature? Who knows.

IBB. Inscrutable beaver behavior. We’ll keep you posted. It might make sense later.

Photo: Heidi Perryman

2008 Kit Cheryl Reynolds

Sometimes when you watch the beavers you observe them doing things that totally make sense; scooping up mud from a nearby bank to pat on the dam, chewing on a leafy twig, whining when their brother tries to take the twig they’re chewing. These behaviors are instantly recognizeable, we understand them right away and they soften our hearts with their familiarity.

But sometimes when you watch the beavers you observe them doing things that make no earthly sense to us whatsoever, like carrying mud from such a long way away it is a melted speck by the time it reaches the dam, or chewing the leaves off a blackberry branch and ignoring the luscious ripe fruit, or neglecting a big log and that seems just right for dam building. These are what I’ve decided to call Inscrutable Beaver Behaviors (IBB). Sometimes when you observe IBB you find out later it ultimately makes beavery sense in a grand Castor scheme that humans don’t understand at first. The beavers decision to ignore the repairs on the primary dam and tackle the secondary instead is an example of an IBB that turned out to be not just meaningful, but wise. Sometimes IBB occurs as part of a learning curve, and after a few stupid tries the kit gets it right–so it changes from an IBB to just a BB! The blind kit swimming in circles was an IBB that we eventually understood as because of his illness. Sometimes mysteries explain themselves.

But there are some IBB’s that will never make sense, and are just the wasted effort of an aquatic mammal that are fun to watch. This morning I saw an IBB in the form of a yearling carrying a mudball from what I used to call the “annex” pond all the way down to the primary dam. Swimming direction and circling can sometimes be an IBB. Yesterday Cheryl observed the kind of IBB that will probably eventually make sense, when she saw dad come out of the yearlings “frat house”. What examples of IBB have you observed?

Confusing and amusing as it can be at times, it is undeniably true that IBB is much easier to understand than its corresponding trait in humans: IHB.