Beaver (Castor canadensis)

One of our old favorites is the wonderful world of the beaver. This little
fellow is slow moving on land but when in the water his movements are quite
graceful. The only water based enemy the beaver has is the otter and they
will only attack the very young. This burly little fellow will weigh 65 to 100
pounds and reach 46 inches long. They may be seen in most of Canada, all
of the U.S., except Florida, Southern California and Southern Nevada. Any
body of water such as streams, lakes, rivers and marshes can be a home
for these creatures. We have seen their lodges in the middle of ponds, on
the banks of rivers and just burrows into the dirt bank of
a small stream. The young are so buoyant that they have trouble diving so most of their swimming is on the surface. Their meat is not highly prized but the fur of the beaver opened the exploration and discovery of much of our western U.S. During the 1820 to 1840 period, Beau Brummel established the popularity for beaver hats and the race for pelts began. This was the mountain man era when men like Jim Bridger, Bill Sublette, Broken Hand Fitzpatrick, and Jedediah Smith roamed the west in search of animal fur.

The beaver can be a pest, building dams in the wrong place and flooding private land, but also they can be a help in placing dams where they may hold back flooding conditions.

We, in years past, would quietly enter our canoe at dusk and paddle around
looking for the tell-tale silver wedge of water that a swimming beaver makes.
Slowly we would make our way towards the animal while he was in the water and eating young willow branches. Shining
a flashlight on the beaver one of us would focus our camera for a picture. They would let us take only a couple of shots and then slap their tail and dive into their dark pond. There were times when the beaver would swim around our canoe, just out of reach and splash us by slapping the water with it's tail. And other times swim under the canoe bumping it with its back seeming just to play with us.

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Beaver (Castor canadensis)

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