Yesterday was such a grippingly horrible freeway accident in the political world I’d be tempted to drape the entire site in black if I knew how. And the beaver news is similarly grim so it all works together to make us seem doomed. I’ll comfort myself with a truly monumental GIF at the end of this post. If you’re easily offended I advise you to read family circus instead this morning.
“Want to see a beaver lodge up close?” Herb Sobanski Jr. is grinning like a boy scout, knee deep in the freezing swamp water. “Sure,’’ I say and move toward him eagerly, too eagerly in fact, and I almost lose my balance. Each step in my rubber hip waders feels like I am walking on balloons. The cold water surrounds my legs, then my thighs. I walk forward slowly.
“Hey, would you look at that!” Herb says suddenly, and points delightedly to where an intricate birds nest filled with red berries hangs from a nearby branch. “This is why I love this, I always see somethin.’ ” He forges ahead. Soon we are about 10 feet from a beaver lodge, a huge mound of sticks and mud that juts up from the surface of the water. I have never been so close to a beaver lodge before and I stand in awe of its size and complexity. But where I see the mystery of raw nature, even here, 30 minutes from downtown Hartford, Herb sees the problem that the state called him in to resolve. The beavers that built this lodge have flooded the woods so badly that their extensive pond threatens to pollute the local water supply with giardia, what has historically been called “beaver fever.”
The author of this bit of auto-erotic ‘trapper fan fiction’ is professor Leila Philip, who, appropriately enough, teaches creative writing at the College of the Holy Cross in MA. She is currently working on a book with Garth Evans called “Water Rising” which is either about climate change or Chinese hoaxes depending on your point of view, I guess. She makes it clear that these particular beavers must be killed because of beaver fever. As history has taught us, this must be true because it rhymes.
“There’s fresh mud on top, so you know its active,” says Herb, studying the lodge intently, “and look, there’s the feed pile.” He points to a stretch of water to the right of the lodge where branches and even large limbs rise up through the surface. Sun glints through the trees. Herb nods appreciatively and we admire the feed pile in silence. “They’ll eat that all winter. Swim over and take a branch back to the lodge,” says Herb, “Open up a beaver’s stomach, nothing inside but sawdust.” He points again, “Look, there’s an osprey nest! Isn’t this beautiful. I love it back here.”
“A yearling,” he says quietly, his tone serious now as he works to free the animal. “Pelt won’t be worth much, but it’s good eating. This would be a good one for you to try.” He throws the beaver onto the bank where it lands with a thump, then he resets this trap, submerging it back down in the water with his bare hands. “We got a guy who is going to make us beaver sausage,” he explains. Herb swears beaver tastes good, especially as beaver chili.
I’m not listening. I’m looking at the beaver. I can’t imagine eating beaver chili. For Herb, the beaver is an animal to be harvested. He’ll even use the tail to make coyote bait. To me, the beaver is a wild animal, and it makes me uncomfortable to think of it having to be managed or, in wildlife management lingo, “harvested.”
“Can you grab that for me?” Herb says casually. I know he is pressing me into this moment. I’ve asked to come along to learn, after all. I nod and grab the beaver’s front leg. It is surprisingly heavy. I carry it back to the stand of pine where he had left his wicker trapper’s pack and, as carefully as I can, place it in, headfirst. I am implicated now. No longer an observer.
Herb throws the pelt over his shoulder to take it upstairs to stretch, and as he walks away I ask him the big question — why trap? He answers easily, “Not everyone can kill; it’s not for everyone, but I respect the animal. If we didn’t manage the populations, there would be so much disease and starvation, people don’t realize.
“Why do I trap? Not for the money. I have lots of other ways to lose money,” he laughs, then grows serious. “Even if fur prices are down. I’ll still trap. I love it out there. Its spiritual. . . . It’s my church.”
I think of Herb’s respect for the animals he is trapping and how he’ll use every part of the beaver he has killed. I think of the bullet hole decals on his truck, his motorcycle, the many signs promoting guns in his fur shack, and how this trapper, demonized by animal rights groups, is a keen naturalist.
Mocking the wistful romantic fascination these types have with trapping – as if it were the last frontier in an endless sea of desk jobs – is something I dearly love to do. I believe I did it best in this article, if you’re interested. For now I will just focus on the fact that she is surprised that he knows so much about nature!
You know, successful serial killers, rapists and child molesters are keen observers of certain parts of human behavior too. They understand their habits and know the details about what they’re likely to do next or find amusing. They actually have to in order to practice their trade, as it were. I’m even willing to go as far as to admit they know something about human psychology.
But that, of course, doesn’t make them psychologists.
Just like knowing how to trap beaver doesn’t make you a naturalist. Look, I get it. trappers are people too, and I guess it’s nice he uses every part of the animal, (although I’d rather every part of that beaver got to stay in that pond, but that’s just me). But, honestly. Can you do me ONE favor Leila while researching your book in the mud. Spend a day installing a flow device with Mike Callahan a few counties over and let him tell you just a few things about the good beavers do or the ways they can help us manage the effects of climate change. Let him show you what happens to an ecosystem when beavers are removed. Then write a column about that, will you?
I promise I’ll read it.
More stunning beaver research today from Norway, where a lucky beginner has shot a monsterous beaver of a size never before seen in the history of history. And you know they know what they’re talking about because just LOOK at the photo they start the article with: (If you’re new to this site go here to read the secret).
Twenty-seven-year-old Mats Thorsvik’s first beaver hunt started in April in northern Norway. By his own admission, he specifically wanted to hunt beaver, which suited the owner who was fed up with the beavers gnawing down the trees on the land. After several long yet disappointingly unsuccessful hunting tours without even catching a glimpse of a beaver, a giant creature suddenly appeared, the Norwegian hunting magazine Jegeravisen reported.
“It was a beast of a beaver that came out of water. I could not imagine it was so big before we got it on land,” Mats Thorsvik said. “When I first saw it, I thought it was about 20 kilos, so I was amazed at how heavy it was. I have never heard of such heavy beavers.”
When the animal was dragged ashore with the help of sticks and weighed, it clocked an amazing 34 kilograms.
Just in case you are American and need a translator, that works out to 67 lbs. Castor Fiber and Castor Canadensis tend to be close to the same size, so this is an adult beaver, but by no means a gigantic one. I wouldn’t normally post the photo of a dead beaver, but this seems so pathetic to me I wanted to post it so he looks as foolish as he deserves. Do trappers ever take selfies of their catch?
Professor Frank Rosell of the University of South-East Norway has researched beavers for 25 years. According to him, a beaver this big is highly unusual. Rosell explained that beavers seldom grow above 25 kilograms, which most likely makes Thorsvik’s trophy a Norwegian record. According to Rosell, the heaviest beaver he personally encountered was a pregnant female of 30.5 kilograms.
You can bet I’ll be asking our Norwegian researcher friend Duncan Haley about that. But for now just read it in the scathingly doubtful tone it deserves. As I’ve said before,
there are lies
here are dam lies
and their are beaver lies
Here’s my special present for the the GOP congressmen and women that made being raped or having a C-section a pre-existing condition yesterday. Let’s hope it’s becomes the albatross of a generation.
Give a Dam: PW Talks with Leila Philip
They’re extraordinary problem-solvers. When they have a hole in a dam, they just repair it with whatever they have to hand—a rock, a stone, some fiber-optic cable. They’ll just stuff that in. Mike Callahan, who heads up the Beaver Institute, sent me a picture of a beaver dam built around a pickup truck, which I thought was one of the best examples of our moment. I lie awake at night, worrying about the environment and the future, and I think beavers are just an extraordinary story of hopefulness. Because this is nature’s resiliency, doing what it can do, if we either leave it alone or give it the opportunity. We are in a moment where I think we need to adapt. And beavers are incredible adapters.
As Leila’s passion for this weird and wonderful rodent widens from her careful observation of its dams in her local pond, she chronicles the many characters she meets in her pursuit of the beaver: fur trappers and fur traders, biologists and fur auctioneers, wildlife managers, PETA activists, Native American environmental vigilantes, scientists, engineers and beaver enthusiasts. What emerges is a startling portrait of the secretive, largely hidden world of the contemporary fur trade and an immersive ecological and historical investigation of these animals that, once trapped to the point of extinction, have rebounded to become one of the greatest conservation stories of the 20th century. Now, beavers offer surprising solutions to some of the most urgent problems caused by climate change.
