Beavers

So the other day I was minding my own business in my office downstairs when a truck pulls up outside.  Now Hereward Farm is not exactly a place you just happen to be passing.  You have to take not one dirt road but two.  Actually, the second dirt road may not meet the official criteria to be called a dirt road.  In fact, this is almost one of those “you can’t get there from here” places.  The guy in the truck must clearly be here for a reason.  After exchanging the usual pleasantries he came right out and asked me if I would mind if he destroyed my beaver dam.  Well, in my line of work that is not a question I am used to hearing.  The first thought that crossed my mind was that he was from the Environmental Protection Agency and he was trying to entrap me into destroying a beaver family (similar to what the ATF did to Randy Weaver at Ruby Ridge only this time destroying a beaver was involved rather than cutting the barrel off a shotgun).  After nervously scanning the perimeter for snipers, I asked him for some additional background. 

It turned out he was a contractor working on the adjacent property upstream of the creek trying to install a culvert for a bridge across the creek.  The beaver had built the dam so high that the water had backed up to the point that he could not add the culvert despite pumping out water.  He insisted in walking down to the creek and showing me the dam.  As it turned out, there was another dam downstream of the farm that had caused the creek to back up so that my beaver had to build his dam even bigger.  This must be the beaver equivalent of keeping up with the Jones’.  To cut a long story short, I agreed that he could disrupt only the corner of the dam so that the water level would fall sufficiently enough to complete their job yet be something the beaver could easily fix.  This evening I finally had the time to go down to the creek and have a look at what was going on.

The first picture shows the dam and the lodge.  The white flags are not the beaver surrendering but where the contractor marked the position where the dam was knocked down.  The level of the creek has fallen significantly as can be seen by all the mud.  Walking in the mud I of course saw beaver tracks all over the place.  These are much bigger than I thought.  The footprint with the Toyota key is about 3.25 inches across.  That’s about just under half of my hand size.  If hand-to-body size ratio is fairly consistent across mammals that means the suckers could be nearly half my size.  Upon that thought I decided to leave not wanting an upset family of large beavers with even larger teeth to mistake me for a Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) worker.  The final picture shows the creek downstream of the beaver dam.

So all humor aside, if the beavers are doing no real harm and a simple workaround solution appeared to work, then why not leave them alone?  Of course, if they flood my field I may think differently!