You got to love the outdoor classroom. This week, Ruby, Kate and Joey came out to the park with their mom and grandma to spend an afternoon learning about the Nelson’s Creek beavers. The dam the beavers built is quite impressive. It must be about 100 ft long and about 6 ft high in the middle of the creek. The beavers worked many hours laying thousands of sticks and then locking them in place with mud. I am always impressed with the amount of work beavers can accomplish in a short period of time.

It is about a half mile hike uphill to get to the beaver dam but the kids were full of energy. In November, the ponds are usually covered with ice but with the unseasonably warm conditions the beaver are still working. The kids watched the beavers swimming back and forth in the pond. You can see Kate and Joey in one of the attached photos as they examined one of the huge aspen trees that the beaver had partially cut down. There were two of these large trees that the beaver started cutting and then seemed to abandon.

The kids enjoyed seeing how many chips had already been removed up to this point and pretended to bite into the tree. All three kids climbed on the dam to get a first hand view of how the sticks were interwoven together to hold back the water. Ruby wondered if it could come apart but I assured her that only a week earlier it had stood up to the largest flood in 25 years.

In one photo the beaver is carrying mud up on the house. The first time I saw a beaver scooping up mud and carrying up the bank I just had to laugh. They waddle on their hind legs just like a penguin except the beaver carries large armloads of mud in their front paws to reinforce the lodge.