Busy As a ...

The engineering applied to this rodential (is that even a word?) project just blows me away.

The beavers around here have been living up to their reputation lately!

I've been keeping an eye on their progress with this fairly good-sized tree, on my daily walks.  Isn't it amazing?
Here's a close view of the finished product of all that labor.  Now, what are they going to do with it?  I mean, how do the beaver figure to move a tree this size?  Will they gnaw it up into "manageable" sections?  And what is a manageable section for a sixty-pound beaver anyway?  Inquiring minds want to know!

Aren't the beaver toothmarks fascinating?

I think it must be beaver heaven here, with twenty-five acres of lake and this beautiful swamp to build their lodges in.  Occasionally I've seen beavers towing branches and much smaller trees all the way across the lake to the man-made dam at the bottom.  They industriously pile their woodwork against the giant wooden dam and concrete spillway in a neverending quest to make it bigger.  Then we rake it off, as the weight of the accumulated wood and mud they work into it is very bad for the structure of the dam itself.  It's only designed to hold back the weight of the water, not a world of mud and sticks as well.  I can't help feeling a little sorry for the beavers, working so hard for no return.  However, they're still quite free to dam up all the little branches that empty into the lake along the shoreline, and they do that to their hearts content.  

I wish I had a blogging tutor so I could learn how to arrange these posts the way I see them in my mind!  Apologies for the randomness.