Archive for the ‘woods pictures’ tag
Beavers – Oh My!!!
Dead Trees from Beaver Dam and Damage
We recently watched a documentary on Beavers with our kids. 
This topic has special meaning for us because we have a family of beavers living in the woods behind us for the past few years. Beavers, if you don’t know, are the only other living being on the planet other than people that alters their living area to suit their needs.
Every couple of weeks (months?) I try to plan out what I call an Adventure Day for my family. It is my responsibility to figure out the agenda and experiences that will result from each unique adventure plus it gives us time together to bond in ways that we sometimes forget in these hectic times. It is also a great opportunity to help teach our children about some of the lessons that aren’t necessarily taught at our school or give them exposure to other experiences. Our mission was to find the latest beaver dam and take some pictures of it so the girls could talk about it in school.
For this Adventure Day, we didn’t have to travel far. We literally walked out to our backyard and kept on walking. We have a large tract of woods that is partially owned by our Homeowners Association and also privately held. My guess is that it spans at least 100 acres when it’s all added up. Running through this tract of land was a little stream that carried enough water to make it a good jump or more. As I stated above, we knew the beavers had moved in a few years ago and I started to watch the progress (destruction?) that they did to this little tract of woods. Since they have moved in, our little engineers have succeeded in turning this woods into a huge lake!!!
Beavers skin the trees for food.
I’ve have tried to get the local Fish and Game department to trap the beavers and clear this area for several years. They have knocked down the dam several times only to have the beavers move further into the woods and thus more protected area to rebuild it. According to Fish and Game, trapping the beavers only causes another problem – what to do with them? If you don’t move them far enough out, they will find their way back to their original grounds. Shooting them seems a bit extreme (IMHO).
The latest beaver dam. It may not look big however there is a lake as a result of this.
So the moral of the story is to let nature take it’s way.