Here in Illinois our large mammal population is pretty disappointing. No wolves, no bears, nothing approximating a predator excepting coyotes, who have worn out their welcome based on what what is being reported locally. ( I couldn't even read the whole story, but if you're interested, click here. ) That leaves deer. Hardly formidable. And beavers. Yep, beavers.
Okay, so they're not predators unless you are a tree. Or are they?
Laugh all you want, but beavers can be damned scary. In a trout steam, Mike is intimidated by them, while Ephemera is downright scared. My dad as well had told tales of beaver induced nervousness while flyfishing but as he is also freaked out by cows staring at him, I must discount his beaver fears. I made a good deal of fun of both husband and brother for their decidedly unmanly attitude about these creatures until I really got a good look at one. Which is not easy to do.
Castor canadensis swims with nothing but the top third of its head above water thus hiding the fact that it is, relatively speaking, enormous. Up to four feet from tail to nose, weighing in at somewhere between 40 and 100 pounds, and possessing both horrendous eyesight and teeth powerful enough to down a 25 foot cottonwood in a single night, they are something to be reckoned with. Matters not that they are herbivores. The big tooth/bad eyesight combo is disquieting. Further, they are capable of swimming at 4-5 mph (rather speedy relative to size) and submerging for up to 15 minutes at a time. And man, are they quiet in the water. That's the unsettling part. I have seen my brother become visibly uncomfortable as a beaver swam towards him on his home waters. I don't believe it had intention threaten him, but he maintains that the beavers know exactly what they are doing when they swim, completely submerged, directly at him while he's fishing. Beaver intimidation. To be fair, he's invading their space, although after stepping into the same river every day for over ten years, it would seem they'd be used to him by now. And he them.
Kola is no less bothered by them. Their tail slap can be heard from a quarter mile away and the sound never fails to incite her fury to locate the source. She jumps in, swimming frantically to find the offending rodent but usually gets called out by me before she can come nose to nose with it. We rarely see a pair together, and even when we do come upon one, it's unusual to be able to watch for more than a minute or two. If we hear the tail-slap, it's too late--they have already disappeared, Nessie-like, to pop up five minutes later a quarter mile downriver.
Lodges are built into the river and creek banks, further disrupting root systems already compromised by floods which occur a half dozen times a year. Based on Kola's disappearance into a lodge under a bankside cottonwood last week, they must be huge indeed. One minute she was involved in a preliminary investigation of the doorway, and the next all I saw was her tail disappearing into the cavern. I did a little healthy screaming at her (angry, surprised beavers and a fearless Lab don't seem like a good mix) and when she came out she did so nose first. The house she invaded was large enough for her to turn around upon exit. Just how many beavers were in there? Possibly a lot. Kits live with parents for two years after birth and assist in the rearing of the next year's litter, which can be up to six per season depending on food availability. Fortunately for Kola no one was home at the time or the family was in another chamber when she visited.
I am afraid that this spring our resident population is in for some unpleasantness. The number of trees they have downed in the last three months is going to make the Forest Preserve idiots angry and I fear they will begin trapping them. Every few days another two or three trees are girdled or felled, creating a bizarre maze of naked-to-the-waist trees. Once the trees are on the ground (or near it--it is rare that their chosen target actually makes contact with the soil--instead nearby trees trip up the fall and the lengths of wood are suspended four feet up) they strip off as much bark as they are able and snap off the branches within biting reach and leave piles of grooved shavings everywhere. They prefer the cottonwood, maple, and willow growing along the river and creek adjoining it, and are truly changing the landscape this year. If they keep it up, within another year there will be nothing left to hold the soil in place and no trees left on the banks.
If I could warn them about what may be ahead I'd do it. Tell them to lay low for awhile until things quiet down. But they must do what they were built for. Strange that their hard-wired, genetic responsibilities-- speedy and irreversible landform rearrangement, forest demolition, ceaseless natural resource consumption, frequent construction--should make the human population so annoyed.
Sound like any other species we know?
