Beaver!

We have a 38-year old horse named Champagne, who lives on about 50 acres of fenced in land with a large pond, lots of trees, and some grass. We feed her daily. About 10 days ago we noticed that her food wasn't disappearing and we hadn't seen her for a day or so, so on the weekend we decided to look for her. It didn't take long to find her near the pond, standing in some very lush-looking grass. As long as we were there, we took a look at the pond, which we visit relatively infrequently. I noticed a few small trees that had been chopped down and then a pile of large sticks on the side of the pond with some mud and leaves on top of it.

The dogs seemed interested in the pile and we figured it was a beaver home, so we pulled some of the sticks out to encourage the dogs. Nothing happened, so we checked out the dam, found some larger trees with those distinctive beaver tooth marks (I only know about this from cartoons, actually) and figured there's got to be a beaver around. We went back to the house.
 
Then I started to hear Thunder, the huskie, barking. And barking, and barking. After maybe two hours, I decided I had to go see what was going on and found him at the edge of the pond while a very large beaver was calmly swimming back and forth in front of him. Thunder and Rosie don't know they can swim, which is probably a good thing, but Thunder really wanted this beaver for something or other. Fortunately, he stayed on or really near the shore and didn't tangle with the big thing. But we did get some pictures.
  

 

This is my Blackberry picture. The beaver is the spot in the calm water just about dead center in the picture.



 

Tom brought a better camera

We've only seen one, but can't imagine he, or she, lives there alone.