Wildlife

BEAVER

It was in the early spring of 2006 when three beaver escaped holocaust finding refuge in our three quarter acre wild life pond.
In appearance they were young beaver looking somewhat bloated.
Two of the beaver seemed in fair condition the third having broken free from a trap or shot was dragging a paralyzed back leg. The cripple swam extremely slow and was reluctant to move when approached.

I immediately welcomed the homeless beaver by cutting aspen saplings and placing them in the pond. My offering of a new home and aspen were readily accepted. The beaver soon supplemented their diet by cutting unwanted willow and tag alter from the shoreline including small aspen located a short distance from the pond. I was forced to selective guard birch and spruce trees leaving the beaver only trees I had debated removing myself. To my knowledge beaver eat birch when other foods are unavailable and never eat spruce or pine. No attempt was made to make a feed bed or build a beaver house. These apparently were bank beaver making dens in the bank with underwater entrance. In late fall I found a dead beaver on the shore line possibly the cripple.

By fall there was no evidence of a feed bed but I noticed several bank dens. The beaver wintered under the ice surviving on cattail roots, pond lily roots, water weeds. Weekly I shoved fresh cut aspen under the ice. Paul Strong’s book titled “Beavers” states bark is not easy to digest so beaver prefer cattail, arrowhead, pond weed, smart weed, milfoil, pond lily, a variety of sedges, nettles, blackberry, gritty stems of bulrushes and large masses of algae or pond scum which they swim into and pull together with their front paws. When I fed the beaver aspen leaves were eaten first. By mid summer our pond was nearly free of unwanted weeds, cattail and pond lily which threaten to take over. Beaver are natures natural weed control.
Nature has played a great part in my life and I feel it’s time to give back. Our wild land acreage provides habitat for all wildlife be it bird, fish, amphibian, snake, or mammal.