Rural New Englander battles beavers

New Englander Catherine Grow took on group of industrious beavers who had completely stopped the brook in her yard with a massive, beaverly lodge. "Twig by twig, branch by branch they slowed, then virtually stopped, the fast-flowing water. By mid-autumn, they'd built a significant structure, creating behind it a deep, clear pool that caused water to overflow the banks of the brook and into neighbors' fields. Upon breaching the barrier, our neighbor found a canoe oar among the debris and gladly took it home," Grow writes for the Christian Science Monitor. Grow made several attempts to dismantle the lodge. (Photo by Newscom)

Yet, the beavers kept building "higher and sturdier. ... The beavers had become a problem," writes Grow.  The beaver occupation went through the winter, causing power outages, water outages, and stripped forests. The town's road crew came with a front loader and dismantled the beaver lodge, assuming the critters would move. They did move,  but only to the adjacent mill pond where the lodge grew so big state officials had to set traps to get rid of them. "By early summer, the millpond was covered with algae: a solid, chartreuse mass unbroken by a single ripple of movement. The brook ran unobstructed; saplings and brush re-grew in the nearby woods. I stared wistfully at the mound that had once housed such industrious – if destructive – interlopers, as their dwelling increasingly became obscured by the steady creep of lush, green foliage. It was quiet on the waterways. Too quiet." She eventually found her industrious friends a little further upstream. (Read more)