Wild Things: A bounty of beavers

North American beaver ( Ed Kanze Photo)

By ED KANZE

If it hasn’t arrived already, the world’s second biggest rodent, the North American beaver, may soon be coming to a wetland near you. Brace yourself. Beavers, like humans, are not creatures of subtlety. They tend to take over a landscape and a watercourse and manipulate it to their own ends. 

Here’s how it tends to work: A pair of beavers hoping to establish a home and a livelihood in the suburbs (or wherever they’re arrived) find a stream flowing through a valley rich in the foodstuffs — largely but not entirely the inner bark of deciduous trees — that allow beavers to weigh 50 pounds or more and sometimes in excess of a hundred. But beavers can’t sustain high enough speeds on land to keep ahead of bobcats, coyotes, Labradors, and other would-be predators, so they employ a work-around. They build dams.

The dams flood the valleys filled with the trees the beavers aspire to fell and de-bark. Now the rodents, supremely at home in water, can swim to and from their dining places, safe, or mostly safe, from those who would eat them.

Beavers also excavate canals, so they can reach more trees, and they build sturdy lodges in which to take shelter in summer, autumn, winter and spring. A lodge is constructed of sturdy framing members, plus adobe. Mud is moved one mouthful at a time. Framing members are moved with grasping incisor teeth, which at times function almost like an extra set of hands.

It takes a big, powerful animal to accomplish all these tasks, and let there be no doubt. Beavers are enormous, at least as rodents go, and they are strong enough to fell the largest maple or beech. Once, when beavers were newly returning to Westchester County, I picked up a large and freshly dead beaver off a road in Katonah. I wanted to heft the animal and see how long and heavy it was. I grabbed it by the tail. Hoisting it wasn’t easy, but I managed to lift the animal until the tip of its tail was even with my Adam’s apple. I’m a little shy of 6-feet tall. The nose of that beaver never left the ground.

Had I known then what I know now about the edibility of beavers, I might have brought that fresh, still-warm carcass home and cooked it. A trapper gave me a skinned beaver once, and my family and I made “beef” stew from its flesh throughout most of a long winter. The meat was lean and delicious. No one who tried it would have imagined the meat to be anything other than a good cut of Black Angus.

One of the most interesting things about beavers, and the most admirable, is how they raise water tables by slowing the movement of water downhill to the sea. In drought-prone areas of the West where climate change is causing groundwater levels to fall, leading to dry wells and threatening the viability of cattle ranches, the beaver has become persona grata. Today, beavers are being re-introduced to areas where they were long extirpated. 

Another cool thing about beavers is their industry. “Busy beaver” well describes a creature that spends spring, summer and fall laying up stores to keep it fed through the winter. The beavers of northern North America inhabit waterways and water bodies that typically ice over in winter, restricting the beaver’s comings and goings. Lodges have only underwater exits and entrances. No problem for the beaver, even in winter. These clever animals stash food in advance so that they have plenty of bark to sustain them after ice limits their movements.

I can’t resist ending with the funniest beaver story I know. One mild, sunny March day when I served as curator of the Pound Ridge Reservation’s Trailside Nature Museum, the phone rang. A distraught northern Westchester woman was on the line. She lived near a swamp and had opened her front door to let in some fresh air. The air came in, and so did a substantial beaver. Large enough to be intimidating, the rodent was shambling around the woman’s living room. What should she do? For a moment, I was at a loss. Then I remembered the broom trick, which can be helpful with snakes and squirrels and all manner of wildlife that turn up in places where they’re not appreciated. I suggested the woman not hit or risk angering the beaver but gently coax it toward the door. She said she would do this. I exacted a promise that she would call me back and let me know how things turned out. Alas, she never did. Decades later, I’m still wondering about the outcome.