wildlife sighting

We've had a new visitor around here lately. We've seen him once or twice before, but today we decided to try and sneak up on him for a closer look. Camera in hand I carefully edged my way under the cover of trees down the hill to the valley. And this is what I saw.

Come in a little closer then. You see. Its a beaver! 

I got to the bottom of the hill before he seemed to care that I was there. But once I set foot on the even ground of the valley, his head was up and he decided that he didn't want to hang around.  And much faster than you'd think for an animal so bulky, he was off through the reeds...

...and disappeared with a quiet splash into the creek. 

By this time I was joined by a few other hastily coated and hatted nature enthusiasts, still munching their afternoon snacks, (that's a pancake left over from this morning. When eaten as a snack in this manner we call it a 'handcake')

All hastened over to the creek to see where the beaver had gone, and two of them, as you can see above hastened to keep the Baby from getting too close to said creek. Or perhaps the Little Dude was trying to push him aside in order to get there first. Could have gone either way. (But fear not Gran and Oma, his watchful Daddy will never let him get too close to the creek)

We poked around, enjoying the smell of wild mint crushed under our feet and the pleasant muddy rotting smell of fall, looking at the reed and shoots where he'd been eating and wondering if he was trying to build a dam. We followed the creek a little up the bend, and then heard a great rustling and a very vehement splosh as he or she angrily slapped their tail at our intrusion.

We decided to look around a bit more for evidence of the beaver's work, and found two or three places on the bank of the creek where he'd made little mud slides from dragging branches into the water and then probably climbing up and down himself. 

When we went around the other side of the creek to find out what he'd been doing there we found a lot of trees that'd been chomped away at...

..and lots of these little pieces on the ground the resulted from all the chomping. We picked up a few to take home with us as souvenirs. (I remember doing this myself as a child, with my Dad as our nature guide)

L.D began to get quite good at finding these bright spots of freshly gnawed wood.

Whole branches were lopped off in some cases.

And entire small trees in others.

L.D. even discovered some nice sized beaver made logs, which he said we should take home "for firewood". We decided on taking just one, possibly to use for show and tell this week. 

We also found this neat little pile of sticks, uniformly stripped of their bark. The result of many meals I'm sure. 

We wandered further up the creek, to the bridge at the other end of the valley. There are two bridges there in fact, one nice one that Hubs built and one that is just a plank laid across the water. We heard a bit of rustling in the reeds, and Hubs had the bright idea to stomp on the plank, causing it to slap the water in a pretty reasonable approximation of a beaver's tail. The Baby, who was up on his shoulders at the time, found this completely hilarious.  The combination of his giggling and the slaps of that board on the water did finally encourage the beaver to make one more very brief appearance, sliding into the water almost silently and slipping away as completely as a ghost. I hope we did not frighten him away for good. Having annoyed him enough for one day we took our excitement and cold hands back to the house to warm up and make dinner. 

What a lovely afternoon. Beavers always make me feel... Canadian I guess? And excited in a nostalgic kind of way. My very first school 'project' was on the subject of beavers, and I remember a Ranger Rick book on the subject that was a favourite of mine. So fun to have the chance to share my little bit of grade school knowledge about nature with the boys. It felt like the very best kind of learning. 

 

 

Comments

[brooklyn_codger]

This is the best thing ever. Also: Ranger Rick! I loved that magazine.

[finger thumb]

I had a feeling you'd like this post. And Ranger Rick was my first real magazine subscription that came in the mail. My little brother got Chickadee. I STILL love getting magazines in the mail, but the thrill of RR when I was little: mail in my name + wildlife = best thing ever.