Woodchips at the Schoolhouse

     When I saw the huge pile of woodchips alongside School Street here in Oysterville, my first thought was, “Now that couldn’t have been done by a single beaver!  It had to be an entire committee!”
     But logic and even my limited knowledge of nature lore immediately told me that this pile of debris did not come from Bucky Beaver and his friends.  Anyway, his bailiwick is at the north end of town in the ditch that runs beside Oysterville Road between Sandridge and Territory.  There, he (or she) seems to arrive each year at this time and busily dams up the outflow area, perhaps readying for a springtime family.
     The water backs up and floods the neighboring yards, much to the annoyance of the property owners.  I noticed yesterday when I went for my mail that someone has removed a huge pile of sticks and branches from the ditch, perhaps in an effort get rid of the beaver’s food supply or demolish the dam.  However the ditch still looked pretty full so I think, so far, Bucky is winning the battle.
     No, the woodchips near the schoolhouse look freshly made and suspiciously uniform in size.  I imagine they are the PUD chipper debris, dumped there for some project on the schoolhouse grounds.  The beaver committee (or “colony” as it is rightly called) was probably just fanciful thinking on my part.  After all, we do have Ms. Serena J. Porcupine living here in the village, and it would be fun to have her larger cousin, Bucky Beaver, here, too.
     Several years ago we enjoyed watching a beaver in that same Oysterville Road ditch.  He (or she) would lie motionless in the water, just barely visible.  We would stand and watch him for minutes at a time and he wouldn’t move a muscle or twitch a whisker.  But if we shifted our gaze, even momentarily, he took the opportunity to disappear.  Just like that!  Gone!  We never did see him in motion.
     Years ago, my third graders became interested in beavers and did quite a bit of research about them.  They were fascinated to find that, next to humans, beavers do more than any other animal to shape their landscape.  Beavers are major creators of wetlands and in this time of concern about diminishing wetland habitats it seems pertinent to consider what has happened to the beaver population.  Currently in North America there are an estimated 10 and 15 million beavers – down from the estimated 90 million before fur trappers decimated their population to meet the demand for beaver hats.  Some fashion statement that was!