The beaver didn’t come last night. Sam thought that he would. “The beaver can hear the sound of running water; they know when the dam is broken.”
Beaver are damming up the Prairie pond to increase their territory. Sam says if they can cause the water to spread then they can reach the trees while still under cover. The beaver have precious little to dam the pond with so they’ve squished up mud, like a child making mud patties, and made their own little dam.
The little dam didn’t seem a peril to me, but Sam explained the water would back up into the fields and possibly the cabin; the beaver would kill the nearby trees. Already there were trees with bark missing all around; he said the trees had been “ringed.”
And so, under the light of a full moon, Sam took a shovel and broke the dam, and water gushed forth.
Author Shannon Rule Bardwell is right at the cusp of enjoying beavers. You can tell she’s intrigued by their nocturnal creations and interested in their watery imagery. She doesn’t have any idea yet that beavers built the prairie or are good for the landscape or help the wildlife she probably enjoys watching but they catch her fancy. Like they did mine 5 years ago when I just idly watched them in our creek and thought they were “neat”. Like they did yours if you’re reading this. To catch something’s fancy is an archaic phrase and I’m not even sure where it comes from but I will tell you that when it happens it is a powerful thing. You should beware of anything that achieves it. Just look at my life 5 years later.
The beaver reminds me of C.S. Lewis’ “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe,” where the beaver family was the good guys, complete with kindly anthropomorphic characteristics. It’s hard then to think of vanquishing the beaver, but the dictionary describes the beaver in less charming terms: “A large aquatic rodent, having thick brown fur, webbed hind feet, a paddle-like, hairless tail and chisel-like front teeth adapted for gnawing bark and felling trees used to build dams.
Well, I wrote Ms. Bardwell about options because it is fairly clear her fancy might well make her the sight of the only known flow device on the prairie. Since she goes on to write about a friend of her husbands who wants to make a hat by hunting beaver I’m not impractically hopeful, but idle interests are funny things, and anything is possible!
Case in point:this primative video contains the footage I shot the very first time I ever saw a beaver. It was in January 2007 and I believe it was dad. I had just bought a new mac and wanted to make an iMovie but it was too hard for a woman of my skills at that time. Three months later I eventually managed this with the services of Mr. Gates. I eventually mastered iMovie and even hired someone to teach me Finalcut. All I’m saying is that fancy is a powerful thing.
