NYCkayaker Meter Reader Deceiver Re: What's up in the Bronx?

[John Whitlock]

This reminds me a bit of my own experience with beavers.  I used to live in 
a house along the Susquehanna River north of Harrisburg, PA.  Adjacent to 
our house, there was a long narrow island just offshore with a narrow 
channel between the island and the shore.  For a couple of years, a family 
of beavers kept trying to dam up a shallow spot in the side channel.  The 
dam would be going great until the Susquehanna River basin got a good rain 
and the main river (and, of course, the side channel) rose anywhere from two 
to ten feet in response, which happens every few weeks during a normal year. 
Bye bye dam.  We kept joking that this family of beavers needed to be sent 
to remedial dam siting school.

Finally they just disappeared.  Because I had wrapped the trees we didn't 
want the beavers to cut down in chicken wire, we suspect that after a while 
they ran out of suitable saplings and just gave up.  Either that or some 
critter got them, and it takes a pretty large and hungry predator to take on 
an adult beaver.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "William" <haawill at yahoo.com>
To: <nyckayaker at rockandwater.net>
Sent: Saturday, February 24, 2007 2:12 PM
Subject: NYCkayaker Meter Reader Deceiver Re: What's up in the Bronx?


> Now wouldn't THAT be nice thing to have?
> Laughed reading your story Ralph.
> Thanks for taking the time writing it!
> Will of Teaneck
>
>
> --- ralph diaz <ralphdiaz at optonline.net> wrote:
>
>> Beavers have been the bane of my existence for most
>> of the last year in a running battle I have been
>> having with them.  The problem is a small culvert
>> under the long access driveway to my home up here
>> near New Paltz.  Beavers see a culvert as a hole in
>> a perfectly good dam and quickly move to block it
>> with an amazing amount of natural (wood, rocks, mud)
>> and manmade materials (toy footballs and small
>> plastic objects).
>>
>> For the longest time I would regularly have to dig
>> out their stuffing materials.   Putting a screen
>> across the culvert opening would mean they would
>> just pile the stuff against it enough to block the
>> flow of water.   But it was easier to clear away
>> every few days.  Then I discovered something on the
>> Internet called a beaver deceiver, basically a long
>> mesh tube about the diameter of the culvert attached
>> to the mouth of the culvert and running out about 10
>> feet upstream.   I improvised one with a roll of
>> mesh fencing.   Beavers are drawn to the sound of
>> running water and frantically seek to block it.
>> They work on the part of the beaver deceiver closest
>> to the culvet opening where the rushing water sound
>> is loudest as it reverberates in the culvert walls.
>> But beavers don't see that the other end of the
>> beaver deceiver is providing a channel for water to
>> get through to the culvert.
>>
>> This greatly reduced the need to clear away beaver
>> daming material to just ever few weeks.  At this
>> point, the beavers and I now have a working truce:
>> they don't block more than the first half or so of
>> the beaver deceiver and I don't clear away what they
>> have done.
>>
>> Unfortunately the beavers have meanwhile been
>> knocking down fairly large trees in neighboring
>> upstream properties.  Those landowners have arranged
>> for a trapper to take care of them.   Too bad for
>> the beavers and for me.  The ritual blocking by them
>> and deblocking by me has been an interesting natural
>> past time and part of the living in the country
>> experience.   It makes Manhattan feel very far away.
>>  Hmmm, maybe now that beavers have been spotted in
>> The Bronx things may change for you down there. :-)
>>
>> ralph diaz
>> >
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