Beavers Storing for Winter

I should have been looking for work today, but instead I decided to see what the beavers by Mirror Lake were up to.

I planted a chair and tripod near my favorite beaver pond and waited about 20 minutes. First I saw one beaver swimming across the pond and climbing over the dam on the far side. Then a second one swam in my direction, swam up a small channel, climbed out, and headed up the hill to collect aspen branches. I'm guessing the first beaver was a male and the second a female. My guess is that the male would have ventured out first, but that could be backwards. Buck deer usually send the females out first. Anyway, beavers usually live as a pair in a lodge, where they care for their babies for their first year of their lives. If I guessed correctly, the beaver in the picture above is the female.

As the female beaver climbed up the hill I sneaked down near her trail. I stood and watched her for some time when I suddenly wondered where the first beaver went. I turned around and found him floating in the water like a piece of dead wood about 10 feet behind me.

I watched the female go up and down the hill three or four times, collecting a branch each time and sticking it in a tangle in the middle of the water channel, which was connected to the main pond. Interestingly, the male, the one staring at me in the picture above, had been collecting branches on the other side of the pond and was taking them all the way to the lodge.

After he decided I was not a threat, he started taking the branches the female had left in the tangle and swam them back to the lodge. Okay, maybe you didn't find that so interesting.

I crept to within about 10 feet of the female's trail and crouched in front of some willows.

The click of the camera startled the beaver. She dropped her branches and took off for the water. I had wondered if beavers could run. When they get out of the water they waddle slowly like awkward pudgies across the meadow and up and down the hills. After she dropped the branches I realized that they can hurry, but not all that fast. Her run was more like a hop to the pond.

Once in the water, she swam off at a pretty good clip. I felt bad that I'd scared her away from her winter food storage, but I'm sure she ventured back to the branches after I left.

The sun went down soon after.

On the way down the canyon I drove only about 40 mph. Every time I drive down this road at night I end up slamming on the brakes for at least one deer. And tonight was no exception. I stopped for one fawn running back and forth on the road and slammed on the brakes for a fawn and a doe, hard enough that everything on the passenger seat ended up on the floor.

Worse were the black angus cattle. Being black, they're almost impossible to see until you're right on them. Even going only 40 mph, I didn't see one cow standing taller than the car on the road's shoulder until I noticed her (or his) eyes through the right side of the windshield. The ranchers must be gathering them up for the winter, since they were all along the road in places.

Just above the Yellow Pine Campground a truck came up behind me doing about the speed limit of 55 mph, so I turned into Yellow Pine so he could pass. I got out of the car to stretch and wait for a second car to pass when I heard a big "whump" and a "mooooo" just to the west. Sure enough, when I headed back down the road a red Dodge pickup truck with three elk hunters was parked on the side with the front left fender smashed into the front left tire. I didn't see the cow that had been hit, but I did have to weave around about 10 cows walking around on the highway.