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Beaver Tale

 
 
 
You think you would get to a point in your life that you have done and seen basically everything that you are interested.  Well, I can testify that something new and crazier is around each corner.  

I am currently working on a project where I am burying a water line from the stream to our house so we can pump water during the dry season and water the flowers and vegetables without buying stock in the Brentwood water plant. Water is 1.5 cents per gallon by my calculations.   Part of this project is removing an old driveway that ran through the yard (it is mostly limestone) and using this material to back fill the water line ditch.   I then use the material removed for the ditch to replace the road material and make for a much better yard.  I call this process "soil exchange".   During this process I looked up and there was  the world's tallest groundhog or "the beaver"!  Damn, the beaver is back!!  Last season, "a beaver"  managed to eat one of my $29 dollar redbud trees.  Nothing else touched, just a tree gone...  I did not need a repeat of this situation.

I immediately when to get Linda and camera before I approached the beaver, I was still not sure what it was yet.   I also grabbed a shovel, sometimes you need a little help with wild animals.   As we got within 20 feet, the beaver finally moved very slowly to the stream, it was eating some weeds or grass on the bank.  It was either sickly, blind or was used to people and was not scared.  We took a few pictures and left the beaver in a fairly deep pool in our stream.  

At dinner time, by the way we had a really good salad with quinoa and fruit--yum, we talked about what we wanted to do about "the beaver".  I hate to get my trees eaten up and she was unimpressed as well and wanted to get it eliminated!!  Her Dad was an eliminator as well with animals, the old apple falls right next to the tree!!  After dinner I headed to the creek with the shovel to see what I could do the get the beaver out of our hair.   I chased it around for a couple of minutes and then Linda came down to help and at that point we made some progress.  The beaver seemed to be a little livelier and finally started to swim with current towards the river.  This is what we needed...  We were now herding a beaver, first time ever for me and Linda as well!!  It took a couple of minutes to get our little rodent out of our area and under the roadway to bigger river and hopefully on its way.    Good riddance..

The beaver appeared to be last Springs baby and probably got rejected from Mom's den and had to find another place to live.   There is not enough trees and shrubbery in our area to support a beaver's dietary needs.   We have the water, but not enough willows and aspen.  This is the second year in a row this sort of invasion has occurred and the damage was minimal, which is a good thing.   It might be an annual event, who knows.

Next season, Linda and I will be experienced beaver wranglers and will be at the ready--shovel in hand.   The Second Annual Splitlog Creek Beaver Roundup.   Make your own joke here.  

I was have been doing little travel and since I have been home a lot, I have done little running but a lot of shoveling.    I go to Florida this week and should be able to get in a little beach running, sprints on the sand is as fun as it gets.

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