Someone's Been Busy

For the last couple of weeks, we've had visitors coming in saying things like "I see the beavers have been busy." We all thought they'd seen a few chewed trees here and there, nothing unusual.

BUT! It turns out the beavers have been really busy!!

If you take a stroll around the Sucker Brook Trail, you cross a short bridge over the Little Sucker Brook, a small feeder stream that empties into the Rich Lake Outlet.

A short distance up this trail is the old beaver pond (abandoned now for several years),

the dam of which finally blew out this last winter, leaving the Little Sucker Brook flowing through a beaver meadow instead of a pond.

Over the intervening years, young beavers have temporarily taken up residence, patcching up the old dam or building some small ones below, but not one of them has stuck around and called it home.

Until now.

Today I decided to check it out - curiosity, y'know. Boy was I surprised!!! The little bridge now crosses Little Sucker Pond!

Looking below the bridge, before:

and after (shot from the other direction):

(Note that the far edge is actually dam - about a foot high.)

I scrambled through the woods to see the downstream dam (far right in the photo above), because from the bridge one really couldn't tell how tall it was.

In this photo, it looks a lot more impressive than it really is. It is actually maybe about three feet high. The stream here is maybe six feet across.

So far the water hasn't crossed the trail, but if it does, it'll be bye-bye, beavers.