Benny the Beaver Bows Out

A beaver demonstrating what they intend to do all of the trees on your property.

A sleek beaver shows off its tail.

Here's another big event I missed during my seemingly interminable business trip. A beaver showed up and started setting up house in the pond. He dug out a little burrow on the bank of the pond and the dogs started alerting on the burrow opening every time they passed it. Finally one day the dogs stuck their noses in the burrow entry and Benny took off out the back door, landing with a big splash in the pond. There was no calming Nella our mutt after that and she remained obsessed with the burrow over the succeeding days. We were a little worried about a beaver setting up house in the pond; they are voracious vegetarians and ecologically insensitive lumberjacks, eating and chopping down everything in sight. Had the pond been bigger it would have been a different matter. As it turned out, Benny got tired of the dogs rousing him out of his burrow and he left for calmer climes after a few days. More than likely he was a young male beaver who had been chased out of his family and needed to establish a territory of his own. We're hopeful he found a suitable place not too far away.