Taking out a beaver dam

Uh oh…  That swirl in the water?  That’s a beaver.  That grass at my feet?  That’s our culvert.  Beavers like to build dams just on the upstream side of our culvert, which leads to trouble like The Big Flood.  So this beaver-project must be removed…

Here’s one of the culprits…  Making a getaway…

Here’s their handiwork.  This got built in one night (I know this ’cause Marcie and I took a dam out yesterday in exactly the same spot — the beavers like it so much they rebuilt it overnight).  So this one turned out to be really small and really easy to take out (unlike the one before which was a lot more challenging).

The compleat beaver-dam extraction module.  Note the smile on her face — taking out beaver dams is a boatload of fun.  I had a little too much fun on the one we took out yesterday and wiped out my finger.  So Marcie sidelined me and took over the job.

This is the “before” picture — Marcie’s getting ready to attack.

Here’s the “after” picture.  All gone.  Along with another little one that they’d started just downstream from the culvert (an equally big problem for flooding).

Here’s Marcie holding a giant Angelica stem in the downstream-dam.  That’s not a little tree.  That’s a flower stalk!

Here’s the dam — loaded on Trakdor for disposal.  We’ll see whether they try again tomorrow.