Up until a couple of years ago, I would have laughed if anyone had suggested that I would be living in a suburban area and could look out of our laundry room window and be able to see a beaver lodge. OK, maybe I’d need binoculars, but literally three minutes from home, there it is. We have had visits from beavers in the past, but usually I would see tree stumps which had a distinctive pointy shape, or very occasionally, a branch floating purposefully across the pond, which meant that some animal was towing it. Some animal that could swim really well.
We had a lot of trees damaged by beavers around 2013-2015, and then it stopped. In 2019, I had noticed a number of young trees cut off as if someone had taken a single swipe at it with a very sharp machete. I thought someone was thinning the undergrowth. I also noticed a pile of sticks and small branches by a willow tree beside the pond. I wondered what kind of game someone was playing, or what kind of tidying was going on. It never dawned on me that these were not signs of human activity.
And then in April, one person, and then a day or so later, another, asked if I had seen the beavers. And one evening, there was a post on the neighbourhood FB group that there were a couple of beavers swimming around “right now!” so I grabbed my camera and went out. After I had taken about 15 shots of two ears and a nose moving around the water, the beaver dragged a pussy willow branch into the shallows and proceeded to munch on it.
I got these photos and published some in the FB group. The next day, I got some video footage and posted that, and others were posting pics also. This was in late April, and everyone was quite ready for some outdoor distraction from Covid, Every evening, around dusk, dozens of families came out to see the famous beavers. I never got such a clear shot again. Mostly the beavers would come ashore and only once hidden under a bush did they munch on tender shoots. It became apparent that the pile of sticks I had been noticing were a top cover for the beaver’s lodge, but not everyone caught on to that. The beavers would dive underwater near the lodge, so standing on the path behind the pile of sticks was a good place to watch for them to appear again, especially on construction days, when they would swim to the far bank, get a mouthful of reeds, and swim back towards the lodge and then disappear underwater. One lady stood on top of the lodge to get a better photo, totally unaware of what it was – just as well it was well constructed. When there was no-one else around, and it was quiet, Anna and I could hear the kits inside, politely telling mama beaver that they were hungry.
In late May the Town engineers were having problems with the valve that controls the pond level, and had to drain most of the water out so they could try to fix it. (The pond is actually a storm-water management feature – it manages water flow during heavy run off.) Anyway, this transformed an attractive pond into a mud flat, and, critically, drained the moat which was the beaver’s last line of defense. With their castle defenseless, and little to no water to swim in, the beavers moved on.
However, this event did provide an insight into the construction of their lodge. Clearly, there are two separate entrances. Whether this is “his and hers”, “in and out”, or just smart contingency planning, I don’t know. You can see that the beavers engineered not only the wooden part, but the dirt part as well, providing extra space by digging down. Or maybe it’s just wear and tear from all the coming and going. But fascinating.
In the weeks and months following, there were some sightings at other nearby storm-water ponds. It’s hard not to notice when all of a sudden there’s a tree felled across the pathway, after all. Anna and I visited once or twice, one time seeing two beavers in the pond, and of course lots of signs of tree felling. Then a week or two later that pond appeared abandoned. There was so much algae covering the surface, it would have been obvious if a mouse had swum in it, let alone a beaver. No telltale tracks at all.
Which brings us to late Fall. All of a sudden, trees and bushes were getting felled daily around “our” local pond. The beavers were back and now getting big teeth, and felling larger trees. I particularly feel for the Ash trees. A few years ago, to control the emerald ash beetle, the Town systematically felled the remaining ash trees which were already infected or not big enough to bother treating. Some of these refused to die and threw up multiple new shoots which were recently fifteen feet tall and a couple of inches thick. The beavers love them and most clumps are now back to eighteen inch bushes.
Here are some pictures of the devastation wreaked by the current family. I am particularly upset when they fell a four inch trunked tree and it gets stuck, held up by nearby trees. The tree dies and the beavers don’t even get their food.
Our local environment is too limited to support beavers. I suppose in the wild, they thin out the undergrowth in an area and move on to greener pastures. In a suburban setting, there are thin strips of “wildness” surrounded by houses. There are no greener pastures that the animals can get to easily. It is a wonderful privilege to be able to watch these engineers at work, but it’s painful to watch the environment being torn apart.
What are we going to do about you, Mr. Beaver?
