Beaver Blockade at GCC

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Our beaver pond on the road to GCC, created after the culvert was blocked.
Our beaver pond on the road to GCC, created after the culvert was blocked.

Beavers are huge animals, really big, that you almost never see during the daylight hours.  I am holed up at Mary’s comfortable condo on Myers Farm Lane in Greenfield, right next to GCC.  Along the wide boulevard you drive up to to get to the college, there is now a long lake right beside it. It’s a new beaver lake, and it’s getting bigger as today’s rains come down.

This is an old beaver house, but it has an active den in a hole down inside here.
This is an old beaver house, but it has an active den in a hole down inside here.

I went out on one of my daily state-sponsored walks and took a look at the big underwater culvert that’s supposed to take the water from this new lake across the road into a stream.

It seemed like it was blocked.  Then I walked down a little way and found the remains of what might have been a grandly-built beaver lodge but one that may have been built a few years ago and then abandoned.

But when I peered down inside the ball of vines, there was a little hole and it went up into the culvert. This must be where the current batch of beavers is living!

The wake of the beaver in in Montana, my only sighting ever.
The wake of the beaver in Montana, my only sighting ever.

I remember only one time ever seeing a beaver live and in-person. We went out on a wildlife viewing stroll, after dinner when I was staying on a family ranch in Montana.  The man of the house was sure we’d be able to see some grizzlies and we were all very quiet.

A young elk in Montana.
A young elk in Montana.

We waited for a few elk to move toward the water and then as we waited for the bear, a beaver glided across the pond, leaving his familiar wake.

My only beaver sighting preceded the rancher’s admonition to be quiet.

And we did…and we let some time unfold, as the sun had almost come all the way down. We had some silence…

Then he said “Bear!” and a grizzly bear reared up on its hind legs, to our astonishment.  A grizzly bear.

I’m not sure what the college will do if the block continues and a lot of rain brings the water level over the road. It’s only about one or one and a half feet below the road. I think beavers like this are pretty hard to get rid of, though there was only one tree gnawed off in the vicinity.