Everybody has “their thing” that they do.  You know what I mean, for example, baking chocolate chip cookies, or the best lasagna. For me, one of my “things” is that I seem to have the ability to trap beavers.  Don’t laugh.  If you live on a pond, it is a great skill to have.  Years ago, we had to shoot them or worse yet, set the killer bear traps for the beavers that settled here.  It  was awful.  Beavers are smart, beautiful animals.  I can’t bear to kill them, especially when so many people want ponds built on their properties.  Depending on where you live, it isn’t always easy to get a permit to turn a wetland into a pond.  Beavers don’t get permits.  That makes it pretty handy to have a beaver ready and more than willing to work.  My preferred method is to set a Hav-a-Hart trap.  Live trapping, uninjured.  I brag about the year that I trapped the offender in the first 15 minutes after setting the trap.  Usually, I get them within hours.  NOT this year.  It was a solid week.  Every morning with my first cup of coffee and every night before I went to bed, I’d walk down to the trap and make sure that no one was inside.  There isn’t any point to stressing an animal any more than necessary.  I move them as soon as I find them.  This little beaver was so smart.  He had it down.  Day after day I found that he’d poked long sticks into the trap and released it.  One day I found that he’d somehow been able to block the entrance and partially fill the inside with mud and pond weed, his specialty.  On my evening checks, he’d be waiting a bit offshore and smack the water with his tail several times to scare me away.  I was beginning to think that this one would be the beaver that got away, or that we’d have to get rid of by other means.  My neighbor had complained that his field behind the pond was too wet to pasture.  There has been so much rain and the beaver had taken full advantage. The water level was really high.  My damn was soggy.  What the beaver built at night, I’d break down in the morning.  Lines had been drawn.  He had to go.

Location is everything.  Not here? maybe here??  Suble difference.  As the water level changes, so does the trap position.

Got ’em!

This little guy was so beautiful.  I wanted to dig my fingers into his fur coat.  It was long and shiny and so soft looking.  I didn’t.   When it came to the release, he wasn’t about to turn his back on me.  I had to dump him out of the trap.  Poor thing, he hissed and backed away. 

Did you know that beaver hiss?