Anyone who’s ever made an offer to a two year old knows this rule.

You want them to FEEL like they have a choice and get to call all the shots. But because you happen to be the adult and know better you want to actually put your thumb on the scale and determine which option they are going to pick. It’s called stacking the deck, Like “Would you like to wear a sweater or your snow gear to play at Martin’s house?”

They win. You winner. It’s a perfect system.

Which bring us to Lyme Connecticut, the state still trying to solve its beaver problem.

82-Year-Old Old Lyme Resident Faces Loss of Home as Local Officials Consider Response to Flooding

OLD LYME — For more than a year David Berggren’s house has been sinking, and Black Hall Pond has been steadily rising due to beaver activity downstream, flooding his lawn, and dock, causing his plumbing to fail and mold to grow, and shifting the foundation underneath his home on Boughton Road.

“I trapped three beavers on town property near Whippoorwill Road,” said Robert Comtois, the trapper hired by the town, “but they may not have been the suspects. I did try to get back into the opposite bank of Black Hall Pond, but it was so thickly grown-in, I was having a tough time even with my kayak.”

So there can be a drowning 82 year old man or there can be beavers. Which one do you think we should save? We first read about this problem back in June. So you can see they’re tacking this issue with lightening speed. It’s funny because you’d think that was if your property was under a little bit of water in the summer it would be under a LOT of water by January.

I remember it because of the disease. That must be fun to explain to tourists.

Despite the efforts of Machnik, town officials, members of the Open Space Commission and the Old Lyme Land Trust have for months denied knowing either location of the beaver activity responsible for flooding the property of Berggren and his neighbors, or ownership of the land.

“All we know is it’s not on our property,” said Amanda Blair at a December 13 meeting of Old Lyme’s Open Space Commission. “To the best of our knowledge, there is no beaver dam located on the Jericho Preserve,” said Michael Kiernan, president of the Old Lyme Land Trust, in a December phone call with CT Examiner. “We worked with the DEEP expert in 2017 to determine this. At that time, it was determined that the dam was located on one of the private properties to the north of the preserve.”

Two years later, Berggren, Machnik, Comtois and several Black Hall Pond area residents maintain that the dam is clearly located downstream on Bucky Brook, deep in the Jericho Preserve.

Kiernan said an investigation is ongoing.

So they don’t KNOW where the dam is that’s causing the problem but they just keep randomly killing every beaver they see because they hope it will help. That’s like not knowing who robbed the bank but just jailing every person you meet on that street until the atm’s fill up again.

Gosh. Connecticut really is – um – challenged when it comes to beavers.

On December 16, newly-elected First Selectman Tim Griswold said the town would look into using a drone to locate the beaver dam and to determine the responsibility for the flooding.

Two weeks into January, there has been no apparent progress toward resolving the issue.

In multiple conversations with town officials, it has been assumed that only the property owner may authorize the trapping or managing of beavers — in this instance, it appears, the Old Lyme Land Trust. According to both Machnik, and the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection, as a matter of law that is not the case.

You know what state Connecticut borders? Massachusetts. The town of Lyme is about  75 miles away from Mike Callahan at beaver solutions. He could tell which – if any – beaver dams is causing the property to flood, And fix it for you without killing beavers or complaining to the press for 6 months.

But that would be too easy, right? Better to keep killing beavers and sinking lower into the mire.