Beavers and muskrats

Quick post for my blog as I have to get up early tomorrow. Very early! I am going hiking and the group leaves at 7 am as we are going to the east side of Glaicer Park over to Iceberg Lake. 7 am! Iceberg Lake... brrr... I am glad our temperatures have been in the upper 80s F - almost record high temperatures.

I checked the beaver trap this morning. No beaver, but we caught a muskrat. The beavers didn't close the breach in the dam. The beavers must be gathering big logs to really plug that breach. They knawed through a nearby tall aspen tree. The beavers didn't calculate quite correct as the tree fell into another tree and not between two trees. The tree was knawed a foot or more above the ground. I guess beavers stand to do their knawing.

I pulled the trap out of the water. The springs are so strong I couldn't open it to remove the muskrat, must less reset the trap. Daryl didn't leave his tool to squeeze the springs.

As the breach wasn't closed, the water level wasn't overflowing the creek banks and I could get to the edge of the creek. So I opened the breach more. In the daylight I could see to deepen the breach and also remove dirt and debris in front of the breach. I tried to make the breach so the beaver will swim through the trap and not just float branches against it. Also my goal of enlarging the breach was so that in the evening the creek wouldn't be overflowing the banks as the beavers would need more time to fix the breach.

Afterwards I could hear sounds and then see ripples from where some animal or fish broke the surface. This occured upstream and downstream from the dam. I never saw what did this.

Tonight Daryl reset the trap. During the day the beavers did not do anything to seal the breach. They must need more time to procur logs.

Days earlier the beavers had fell a tree over the creek upstream of the dam, a hundred or so feet. They have been working on knawing the section over the creek. Darly decided to remove this source of wood, though I felt until we catch the beavers they will just move to another live tree. We hooked a chain to the tree and used his pickup to pull it across the creek.

Another trap Darly had set on a beaver path near the dam was now exposed as the water level is lower. We decided to move this trap to the fresh path between the creek and the newly knawed tree. Maybe this will get those beavers.