The local beavers had their eyes on my lot

Within minutes after first seeing their cabin property, Mike and Carol Clark knew that this was the cabin for them. Actually, it wasn’t the cabin, or the beautifully wooded lot that swayed their decision. It was the beavers.

Mike and Carol first fell in love with beavers when taking wilderness canoe trips five years before. Now 200 yards from the cabin, tucked away in a shallow bay at the mouth of a small stream, was a large beaver lodge. They envisioned moonlit canoe outings with Zack, their teenage son, quietly observing beavers in their natural surroundings.

One summer evening, Mike and Zack decided to sleep in their tent down by the water. Sometime after midnight, they were awakened by the sound of something rustling in the leaves. “Listen, Zack, I think we have visitors,” whispered Mike.

For 20 minutes, they lay motionless, wondering if their guests were beavers, raccoons, or squirrels. Suddenly, the guessing game was over. They heard the sound of cracking, splitting wood and the scampering of little feet.

“Incoming,” yelled Zack, as a tree toppled over and crashed to the ground a mere four feet from their tent. Shaken, Mike and Zack spent the rest of the evening in the safety of the cabin.

Over the next several weeks, the beavers felled seven more trees on the Clark’s property. No other lit on the lake was touched. To deter the beavers’ gnawing, the Clarks painstakingly placed wire fencing around the trunk of each remaining tree. The beavers are now logging elsewhere. It appears to have worked.

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