Busy as a…

The signs were there, if you just looked and you knew how to read them.

When Annie, the boys, and I lived outside Centralia, Missouri we used to spend some of our free time at a man-made waterhole named Tri-City Lake.  We’d take our canoe or the neighbor’s rowboat, or just stand on the shore, and fish.  Other times we’d hang out in the campground and grill burgers and let the kids play in the shallow water…always keeping an eye on them of course.

A couple times we hiked through the woods that grew around the lake.  It was one of those times that we came upon a young oak tree leaning to the side, its branches tangled in those of the tree it was leaning against.  At its base was a stump from a beaver-killed tree…and a short log.

That’s where I read to the boys the story which was written, not in words, but in the signs.

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We had seen beavers in the lake several times when we were fishing.  They’d be swimming along, cutting a gentle V-wake as they went.  If we got close to one or startled it he’d raise his tail just a little above the water and slap it down to communicate the danger, or was it exasperation at us for disturbing him?

More often than seeing the actual beavers we saw their sign.  If you looked in the soft earth on the shore you might see web-footed tracks or the slides they made.  There were short lengths of branches the buck-tooth critters had gnawed the bark off of.  Other times there were trees they had cut or the stumps of them.

This time was different.

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“Look here.  Isn’t this interesting?” I said.

I read the sign to my boys, “See there?  That’s the stump of the oak.  The beaver stood here on his back feet and gnawed.  See the chips here?  They’re not chunks like you’d hack off with an axe.  They’re bites.  When a beaver cuts a tree, he cuts off bite-size pieces one at a time.  After a while he takes off enough wood that the tree falls.”  I pointed at the stump.

“But this time was different,” I continued, tapping the tree.  “This time, this tree fell into that other one.  The other tree held it up so it couldn’t fall all the way down.  The trunk came loose from the stump and the end shoved down into the dirt.”

Scotty pointed at the short length of log.  “That piece has points on both ends.  What’s that?”

“That,” I said, “is where the story gets interesting.”

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“When the tree didn’t fall, the beaver wasn’t ready to give up.  He moved over to where the tree was standing, leaning against that other one.”  I pointed.  “He started chewing again.  He gnawed the tree until it fell.  But it was already tangled in the other one, so it did the same thing again.  The trunk broke loose and fell to the ground, shoving the end into the dirt again, and the tree was still standing.”

I could imagine the beaver-length piece flipping a time or two before thudding to the ground.  In my mind I could also see the beaver standing there, looking from the stump to the tree to the log and, in beaver language, saying, “Well, shoot!”

Or something like that.

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I carried that log home with us and kept it for a year or two.  Somewhere I probably still have a picture of it.  One frigid winter day the short log found itself inside with an armload of firewood and was consumed by the behemoth wood stove we used to keep us warm back then.

I’m sure the beaver would be glad to know that all evidence of his misadventure has been destroyed and no longer exists…

…except, that is, for this post.

(above) Some videos of a beaver that lived in our closest big ditch.

(below) The rest of these videos were downloaded from Youtube.com.