The Month of the Beaver

Wow! It has been almost exactly 4 years since my last entry here. I know this is a blog about our beavers. I will get there shortly, but please bear with me as I explain my absence.

Looking back over the past few years, 20-20 hindsight lets me see my health was headed in the wrong direction. It hit a low point on December 17, 2021, when I had a heart attack. My right coronary artery had a 100% blockage. Now, thanks to modern medicine and 3 stents, I'm alive and kicking.

For me, it was a wake-up call. I changed my diet and began regular exercise. The biggest challenge was keeping my salt intake down to 2000 mg/day. To give you a sense of how difficult that is for me, I was the guy who would salt potato chips, and my favorite snack was extra salty pretzels from Unique Pretzels. I would buy a box containing 6 bags and go through them in a little over a month. That's a little more than 56,000 mg of sodium. No wonder I had a heart attack.

At any rate, I'm healthier than I have been in the past 10-15 years. I'm back to my college weight and have not had a salt shaker, pretzel, or potato chip in my hand since the heart attack. Well, actually, that's not true. I did have just one potato chip just to prove that it IS possible to eat just one Lays potato chip.

That's enough about me. This is the beavers' blog, and at last night's Board meeting, I reported that from mid-March to mid-April is the month of the beaver. They have come out from their winter retreat in the lodge and are lean and hungry. They have to fuel up for the coming spring's work and the raising of kits.

There is no green vegetation yet, so they will look for lunch wherever it is being served. Here on the pond, they have located the largest tree on the property. We had protected it with wire fencing in 2015, but they have finally found their way in and are feasting on the tender cambium layer under the bark. They aren't trying to bring the tree down, but their dining efforts will eventually kill the tree if it is not protected before they work their way all the way around the trunk.

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The old fencing had been mangled and looks like beavers' interpretation of January 6th. I'll be contacting the board later today about getting the needed fencing and making the necessary repairs in the next few days, as long as weather permits. We have a winter mix predicted tomorrow, but Sunday and Monday are supposed to be in the 50's.

I also reported that spring thaw will bring more water to the pond, and the pond leveler will become active. This, in turn, will result in the beavers being attracted to the running water in the culvert and will cause them to do some damming. This is normal and to date, it has not presented any significant problems.

However, one never knows, and until the pond level stabilizes later in spring, we will be keeping a close watch to make sure there are no issues. If there are issues, it will be where you see the water flowing into the culvert cage. That's where they will attempt to dam first. If they do, it can be handled with hip boots, a shovel, and a rake.

The kits are usually born in May or June, but if past years are the yardstick, our friends are eager beavers because we've seen kits in late April.

Beavers are nocturnal, but it's not unusual to see them active in the early dawn hours or toward dusk. That's a good time to walk the trails to check out activity on the pond.

If you are new to the community, this is one of the last videos I made of the beavers in 2019 and is one of my favorites. It rare to see that many beavers active at one time here on the pond. 

If you see anything of concern such as beavers working on a tree that poses a safety issue, drop me an email at awolinsky@3dwriting.com .  There is a tree down now, but that was a dead tree brought down by the winds. The beavers are innocent of that damage, but not the one across the trail marked with the yellow caution tape.

With that, I'll sign off and promise it won't be four more years before you hear from me again.