Skip to main content

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.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

First Time Ever?

Things are just a little crazy with the chaos associated with the coronavirus and the global reaction.   Talking with my wife and brother, as well as the rest of the world that will still chat with you, nobody can remember anything quite like this situation.   The crash into the Twin Towers on 9-11 had some elements of the situation, but the total shutdown of sporting events, meetings, global travel and the run on water, sanitizer and toilet paper is just totally new to us.  The Master Indoors meet was cancelled this week, I was not planning on going this year.   I am in the middle of relocation from Nashville to Harper Ferry , West Virginia.  On March 31 we will close on the Brentwood house and close on the new place on April 2.   Getting this into place has been a real battle, but it is going to happen.    We are on our third contract for the Brentwood house and after trying to sell it for 9 or 10 months it will close this ...
4 comments
Read more

Enough!

 I have been voting in Presidential elections since I first cast a vote for Jimmy Carter.  In that election cycle, the country was trying to get the Nixon residue off and Carter was something different and hopefully better.   He was and still is a wonderful human being, but his Presidency did not go well.   Oil shortages, inflation and huge unemployment figures and he was a one termer.  He was not able to make any headway against a very stiff headwind.       I am at the point of this election cycle I cannot wait  to cast a vote against the worst President of all time..  The first Tuesday in November cannot get here soon enough.     I do not think we will ever elect anything as bad as this again.  We will not survive a country if we do.    Is Joe Biden the candidate of my choice--probably not.  Is a mafia Don like we have in place now?? NO!  Does Joe have some seasoning as a leader?...
3 comments
Read more

Time to run my mouth a bit

I raced last Saturday in Nashville at Stratford High School in the TN USATF meet.   This meet is an annual get together and gives everyone their first chance to run outdoors with electronic timing.   The weather was as usual-- threatening --that is what this meet has always attracted, but we only had limited rain, and no wind or lightning.   No lightning is a huge plus to get the races ran.   As I stated, there was no wind, the track was wet and as a result quite cool and that made for great running conditions.  The track would really push back when you compressed it with your spikes.   I set up my shelter near the 100 meters starting line and keep all my gear dry as could be for the event. We ran the 60 meters first with 5 or 6 people in the heat and some were quite a bit younger and faster.   I used my own blocks and that was a plus, the blocks provided did not dig into the track very well and were a little scary due ...
2 comments
Read more