Beaver Love

On our last trip to "The Lakehouse", we discovered that beavers had begun weeding our forest. Actually, we discovered this in about the third year we owned this beautiful place. They felled two trees then, and we thought that was the end of their foray. But, NO!!! We found a "love carving" from the beavers this morning!

Last spring, we found another tree, whose base was left in a chewed hourglass shape, sans its bark. Apparently, beavers love to eat the inside meat of the bark first. That tree has now falled down, and they have moved onto the adjacent Maple. Beavers don't prefer pines; they like the hardwoods. We live in a pine forest and the Pine Beetle has begun eating them. We must get those trees proactively cut down to stem the damage from these insects.

Now, we have the beavers who want the hardwoods near to the shore. Not only do they like Maples, but they also enjoy Crepe Myrtle. Now that I know they are after my blooming trees, we have to figure out what to do. We don't know how many beavers we are hosting right now, but we learned that families can be up to eight members. The young tend to stay with the parents for up to two years after birth.


I brought Jackson and Mattie Grace to explore the cove this morning and capture the damage to show you here. They have been hearing the beavers down here at night, but we don't have a strong enough flashlight to go exploring. Since beavers in South Carolina can grow up to a whopping sixty pounds, our poor little ten-pound "poof" dogs, who think they're really country dawgs, will be outmatched with those long, sharp teeth and claws. We keep a close eye on our babies at night, especially Jackson. He loves to explore and is hardpressed to go to the beaver work area. He doesn't care about the darkness. He's a big boy, so he thinks.

Larry did a little research on the web and discovered there's a hard cloth or wire netting we can put around the base of trees to prevent the beavers from eating them. Also we plan to buy ourselves a motion-detector digital camera to mount on a tree nearby and capture those varmints with a flash. We sure would love to see them. Next we'll also buy a strong flashlight/spotlight for ourselves for Christmas. It'll be fun to try and catch the invaders at work.

They carried off the Crepe Myrtle branches, but we have not been able to find a dam or what looks like the beginnings of a lodge so far. We may take the boat out and check around the other side of the point for signs of a "build"

More on our beaver adventure in another blog. In the meantime, here's a link of interest. Enjoy! http://www.dnr.sc.gov/wildlife/beaver/beaver.html