The Beavers of Popple's Pond: Sketches from the Life of an Honorary Rodent

beavers

PART I

The Beavers of Popple’s Pond

ON MAY 2, A TRICKLE OF WATER worked its way through a weakening matrix of mud and sticks in the base of the dam that contained Popple’s Pond. As the flow increased to a torrent, the waters of Popple’s Pond plunged downstream where, a quarter mile below, the flood aroused the interest of a crew of engineers, the likely descendents of the beavers that created Popple’s Pond decades ago. Although the downstream beavers had projects at hand, something in this flood roused them; they read in it a summons to restore the pond that they had abandoned some five winters before.

And so, on May 6, I found myself once again seated on the mossy shore of this familiar cove of Popple’s Pond. I see the sky reflected in ripples that slice a V across the dark, still water. The source of the ripples steers a trajectory toward my seat. Once beached in the shallow water, the beaver pauses, one paw raised. I offer her my human greeting and she strolls up the bank and flops down beside me. She reaches out with her dexterous paws and sifts through the vegetation in front of her until she locates one of the rodent nuggets I have left for her. Five winters have passed since I first met Willow on this shore. Even then her jutting hip bones suggested that youth was behind her. Now as I run my hand across her cold wet back, I can feel each knob of her spine, each rib. As we relax companionably, a second beaver steams ashore and settles down in front of me. Willow’s mate, Bunchberry, closes his eyes as he chews. The sun is gone and as the landscape fades to monochrome, the soundscape becomes amplified. The robins give their good night tut-tut-tuts from the treetops. A pickerel frog calls from the water. The chorus of amorous spring peepers reverberates. Sundew, a veteran of two winters, arrives with an excited squeaky greeting and clambers over her father’s tail to sniff for nuggets. Bunchberry, sated, relinquishes his place, slips into the buoying water, dips his head under a couple of times and then climbs back ashore on the tip of the little spit of land in front of me. With his tail sticking out in front of him and his great round belly as ballast, this mountain of beaver scrubs his belly with balled fists. In the gloaming, the sedge leaves, wet from much needed rains, shine silvery around him. Mist rises.

With these three familiars around me in this most familiar of places, I feel the comfort of a cycle completed and another beginning; for five years these beavers have shared their places and lives with me, an unlikely confederate. Now, at the beginning of the sixth summer, they have returned to the place where the adventure began.

A high valley in the foothills of Vermont’s Green Mountains cradles Popple’s Pond. The beavers live in this territory by accident of birth and perhaps I do, too. I have encountered the theory that, like birds that imprint upon their mother at a critical window in their development, we humans imprint upon a place at a certain point in our development. Indeed, I have found no place that grips me more firmly than these woods where I spent my childhood. While I have tried to live in other places, I return to these rocky forested hills. Is it because they stage the seasons with such spectacle? Is it the familiar flora? These are essential elements. Another is the wildness. If this goes, so will the sense of home.

This is true for some of my favorite neighbors, too; those species that prefer to live in remote places. I include moose, bear, bobcat, and otter on this list. I reserve a special place on the list for beavers. Beavers deserve mention for two reasons; the first is that they do much to enhance the beauty and richness of wild forests. Secondly, beavers are perfectly happy to conduct their activities in proximity to humans. The trouble arises when both species have plans for the same plot of ground. Since every bit of potential beaver habitat is claimed by one or more humans, opportunities for indignation abound. Humans seldom allow beavers to re-establish wetlands near developed areas.

Beavers are also ridiculously easy to trap, and despite the fact that their pelts have no real value today, they continue to be trapped. Colonies near any road are especially vulnerable, and so, like I, beavers do best in remote places, in the company of bears, moose, bobcats, and otters.

Six winters ago I moved into a house that sits with its back to hundreds of acres of wild forest, an area that had long been one of my favorite destinations for wild experiences. I knew some of the best places were just upstream on the brook that flowed below the house. I could imagine this brook viewed from above, a silver strand among the dark forest, beaded with bright ponds, marshes, meadows, and shrublands, the result of the dogged efforts of generations of beavers. Through the process of developing an environment that suited them, the beavers had restored this valley to something of its primal condition. This mosaic of open habitats adds diversity to the otherwise unbroken forest. Plants and animals never seen in forests live in these beaver-generated landscapes. Many forest dwellers are drawn to these wetlands, too.

On my first night as a neighbor of that wild place, impatient to get into the woods, I decided to sleep out. I headed up the brook in search of an active beaver pond. It was September and the bugs had stopped biting so I could pack just my sleeping bag. Three quarters of a mile up the stream I found a pretty beaver pond and just north of it, a fine meadow for sleeping. The next morning I stopped at the pond to look for signs of occupancy. The pond’s still surface mirrored the scarlet maples and the deep blue of a September morning sky, a perfect reflection save for the wedge of ripples that followed a beaver’s prow. As I crouched and watched the beaver, I heard a heavy even tread behind me. Who would be out so far this early? I turned to see and met the gaze of a moose. She did not seem alarmed, but nevertheless continued her amble past me with greater stealth. I thought the moose and beaver encounters auspicious. This would be a place where I could be at home.

My interest in beavers might have remained one of distant admiration had I not discovered Dorothy Richard’s Beaversprite. The book describes Dorothy’s forty-year relationship with a pair of beavers and their progeny. The story begins in the 1930s, when Samson and Delilah, as Dorothy called them, were released in a stream on her property as part of the effort to restore New York’s beaver population. Dorothy gave little thought to the beavers for the first few months, but when she finally hiked to the part of the property where they’d been resettled, she was astonished to find a pond populated by herons, ducks, and frogs, as well as the beavers.

The beavers altered more than the landscape, for Dorothy’s life changed that day. She began to spend so much time at the pond (bearing poplar branches and apples) that she became accepted as a member of the beaver colony. My favorite photograph in the book shows Dorothy reclining pondside amidst ten portly beavers, two of them on her lap.

Dorothy’s beaver affair led her to obtain a permit to raise a couple of kits and keep them in her farmhouse. She and her husband created a pond in their basement and they soon had beavers scrambling up and down the cellar stairs. Over the years, several generations of beavers occupied the increasingly elaborate accommodations the Richards provided.

I’ve always admired beavers, but it wasn’t until I read Beaversprite that it occurred to me that a beaver might be an excellent companion. The book’s description of the behavior of the house beavers revealed them to be creatures of great affection and intelligence—excellent qualities in a companion.

I read the book at the beginning of winter in the new house and resolved that for the New Year I would try to get to know the beaver I had seen that September morning.

Familiarity

I MADE MY FIRST TRIP to the beaver pond on the evening of April 15, splashing my way there in rubber boots as the remaining heaps of speckled corn snow collapsed into pools and rivulets. Once at the pond, I found a spot on the eastern shore where the water receded gently from a mossy opening, an ideal spot for picnicking and watching the activities along the western shore and at the dam.

Dorothy Richards spent her first months of beaver watching in a hidden spot some distance from the pond. I decided upon a different approach. I would behave in as non-threatening a manner as I could. Things that threaten peer silently from behind trees or skulk through thickets. Harmless creatures, I reasoned, go about their activities in the open. Harmless creatures are calm, attentive to plants, and not particularly interested in other animals. I would, therefore, sit in a visible place, make pleasant conversation, admire the vegetation, and be discreet in my observation of the beavers.

The first beaver appeared as I unpacked. He swam at a leisurely rate down the center of the pond toward the dam until he noticed me. Most wild mammals make themselves scarce once they detect the presence of a human. Not so beavers. This one changed course and did a slow pass by my seat about fifteen feet away. I said hello in a quiet, cheerful voice and pretended interest in other things. Once past me, the beaver plunged, his huge webbed hind feet sticking straight in the air for a moment, then his tail came down with a resounding smack as he disappeared. A trail of bubbles allowed me to track his underwater course until he re-emerged near the dam. Having delivered a message, he could proceed with the business of inspecting the dam.

The sound of chewing directed my attention to a second beaver on the opposite shore. While few families of any species conform exactly to textbook accounts, a typical beaver colony consists of a mated pair and their offspring from the preceding two years. Unless these two beavers had just started their lives together, there would likely be more than two of them.

When the first beaver completed his dam tour, he clambered up the far bank and pushed some fresh debris onto a scent mound, the beaver territorial sign post, gave it a couple of pats with his paws, and then waddled over the summit. Half way across he paused and did a little beaver dance waving his rump and tail from side to side. I would later note, when this activity occurred in my proximity, a complex, spicy fragrance arose.

The second beaver had finished her stick and swam ashore to choose another. To my surprise, she selected a spruce twig, nipped it from its branch and ate it, needles and all. Spruce is not featured as a preferred food on any beaver diet list I had seen. On the contrary, it is generally believed to be unpalatable. It later occurred to me that the aromatics in spruce and fir had a similar quality to the castoreum and anal gland secretions beavers use in scent marking. Indeed, I have since learned that beavers are able to isolate many plant compounds in their castor glands—often those very chemicals plants have developed to deter herbivores. Each beaver then produces a signature blend of these compounds in their castoreum.

Although the woodfrogs, often the first to gather and announce the demise of winter, were still quiet, a Canada goose had arrived and set up housekeeping on the flank of the weathered beaver lodge. Her mate stood, alert, on a floating log about thirty feet from me. Since the beavers were occupied on the far side of the pond, I decided to test my beaver wooing strategy on the gander. I glanced casually in his direction, informed him that he was a handsome fellow, and then busied myself with my picnic. As I gazed (idly) around the pond a couple of minutes later, I was pleased to see the wild gander tuck one leg up into his belly feathers, yawn, and begin preening.

During my first two visits, the gander, Henri, maintained a discreet distance from the nest and his mate. On the third evening he came flying up over the dam from a lower pond honking raucously. His mate stood and joined him in what seemed to be a rapid-fire call and response, HONK-honk,HONK-honk,HONK-honk.

She stood up, carefully covered the eggs in the down from the nest, and flew out to greet him. Following a brief interaction during which there was much flapping, bowing, and honking, Henri turned and swam straight toward me. Yes, we had exchanged pleasantries on a few occasions by then, but I was surprised when he strolled from the water ten feet from where I sat and stared at me. His mate peered nervously from behind him, but the gander just stretched his wings, yawned, and wagged his tail, the picture of goose contentment. He looked at me for several minutes before turning to follow his mate back into the pond.

I thrilled at this evidence of my wildlife communication prowess, an immodesty that Henri corrected on the next evening. No sooner had I spread my picnic than he waded from the pond and strolled over to see what was for supper. Henri had encountered hominids before. After eating his fill he stood nearby companionably and we each watched the activities of the pond at dusk.

I can’t swear his attentions weren’t based solely on gastronomy, but that’s the way of many relationships. While I admired his black leathery feet and elegant plumage, he admired my sprouted rye bread. I listened as the winter wrens and hermit thrushes announced the approach of night. I’m not sure what engaged Henri’s attention once supper was finished, but he lingered on the shore with me. I like to think he had decided that a person made a worthy companion. I thought a goose might be quite acceptable as well.

When I resolved to make the acquaintance of a beaver, I had little notion of the incidental rewards that would accrue. I have always spent time in the woods, but have generally gone in a different direction on each outing. Now, each evening I walked the same path to my place on the shores of Popple’s Pond. Along the way I passed the tiny spring-fed pool in which five clusters of wood-frog eggs appeared on April 20. I watched the transformation from embryos to tadpoles. As the tadpoles got bigger, I found myself interested in how they grouped themselves in the water. Each day I noted the arrival or departure of birds, the advance of buds, leaves, and flowers. I noticed the appearance and disappearance of tracks on the trail. Familiarity allowed me to see changes big and small.

Once I arrived at the pond, I recorded these observations in my notebook and settled down to watch the evening. Each visit brought new treats: the snoring call of a pickerel frog, the heron perching at the tip of the tallest snag catching the glow of sunset, the wood ducks and mergansers pausing on their search for a home, the sedge wren singing.

Each evening also brought things that could be predicted. Between seven and eight o’clock a bold junco arrived to pick through picnic crumbs. A winter wren sang from the dam after sunset. At eight I would hear the raucous arrival of the troop of grackles, their long-tailed silhouettes ghoulish against the dusky sky. One little brown bat swept across the pond at eight-thirty.

A dramatic change occurred on May 4. That morning a pair of geese flew above my house honking with agitation. Sure enough, when I arrived at the pond that evening Henri and his mate were gone. I scanned their nest with binoculars. Nesting materials were in disarray. A lone wing feather remained as possible evidence of a battle. I don’t know what predator enjoyed goose eggs for breakfast. It must have been a creature that thought a swim was small inconvenience for such a meal. I thought it likely to have been the mink I watched fishing there in the winter, such a lively, graceful creature. Still, I gave little thought to the good fortune of the mink. Instead I recalled the distress I heard in the calls of the geese that morning and felt the weight of my own disappointment. I so hoped to have the company of goslings at my picnics.

On many evenings that followed, when I stayed late enough, I heard a pair of geese fly over heading from east to west. I hoped they were Henri and his mate and that they were enjoying a summer of leisure on other ponds in the neighborhood.

The day the geese left I carried some striped maple branches to the pond and within minutes of placing them in the water a beaver swam over, seized one in his teeth, towed it a short distance away, and began eating. He held the stick in his front paws and gnawed the bark off in a straight, tidy row several inches long, left to right, and then, typewriter fashion, turned the branch just far enough to begin the next line and started chewing from the