My Discovery of the Day

Guess what? There is a beaver living in the stream behind our house. I haven't seen it yet, but I know it's there. The last few days, I've been walking up and down the stream with the dogs. it's sort of hard because close to the water, there are lots of very thorny vines. Two days ago, I walked about a half mile up and I came across a rather deep (for this stream) pool. It's deep enough that the dogs can swim across it. There were a few big trees down that were causing the pool to form. While I was there, I saw a few little trees that looked as if they had been cut by a beaver, but I didn't see anything with that characteristic point.

To get to this little pool, you have to cross a fairly large branch of the stream. Up until today, the only way I had found across was to jump across and down - about 3 feet down. It's easy, but I was worried about doing it too much. Today, however, I finally found a big enough log to cross on. Well, when I got over there, it was obvious now that beavers had been there. A whole bunch of cut, fairly large branches are now blocking the pool. The pool as a whole has risen a fair amount. there are a bunch of cut stumps everywhere. I walked up stream a bit to see if I could find their lodge. I didn't find the lodge, but I'm pretty sure I saw the beginnings of one. There is a place sort of under a fallen tree. back under the roots of the tree, you can see a whole bunch of sticks have been submerged. Many of them looked freshly cut. Also, the dogs were running and sniffing like crazy in this entire area.

I'm not sure why I'm so excited, but I think it's cool. I guess I like knowing that wild creatures are still living around here. I've seen tracks of stuff before, but this was neat. Plus, I think it was cool that I could see such an obvious change from the last time I was there. I'll go back tomorrow and see if anything else has changed.