水獺屋 / Beaver Lodge

I want to show you pictures of the beaver lodge (house) that was built right in the middle 0f the lotus pond behind the island where I spent the last long weekend. For those of you who do not know what a beaver is, please consult wikipedia at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beaver#Lodges .

Beavers are found in lakes and rivers all over North America, where there are trees to chew on and fresh water to swim in. They belong to the rodent family, which means their teeth keep on growing and they must gnaw on tree trunks and branches to keep their teeth in shape. You can actually see their tooth marks on trees that are half chewed or completely felled.

Beavers are industrious critters - that's why the expression "as busy as a beaver" (像水獺/河狸一樣忙碌). They would chew up a tree and use the branches along with some mud to build a beaver lodge. The entrance is always dug under water so land-based predators cannot enter their house. Once coming out of the water inside the lodge, the beavers dry themselves in one den and live in another. While beavers spend a lot of time swimming and diving, they cannot breathe under water. In fact, that's how trappers hunt the animal, by setting up an underwater trap, drown the poor thing, and then skin it for their pelt. I was skiing once up north and came upon a frozen skinned beaver. It was one of the most unsightly wilderness scenes I have ever witnessed.

Beavers also use branches and mud to build beaver dams so they can have their private swimming pools upstream. The problem arrives when their habitat is too close to human beings and the latter always use dynamites to blow up their dams so water can flow again. Nevertheless, beavers continue to thrive along side with human. So the next time you walk along the river bank and hear a big k-plunk, it's the sound of a big flat beaver tail hitting the water, which is how beavers warn each other of the arrival of a bi-pied predator called man.