When Muskrat Helped Beaver

When I lifted the beaver, his weight completely surprised me. He looked like he should weigh about 20lbs, but in the pet carrier, he felt about the size of an overgrown muskrat: maybe 8 pounds. I realized his thick coat, which made him look much larger than his weight, must be mostly insulating air space.

I gently placed him in his carrier down on a soft bed of Baltic rushes a few feet from the water. The clear flow of Little Hat Creek cruised quietly by, and under the surface, 3-foot long strands of chara, a native grass-like algae, coursed in gentle waves as the water massaged its way over it. Just upstream a few yards a beaver dam rose from the quiet pool. It was built just the year prior; a little cascade of water percolated its way down the 3-foot tall edifice. I had watched it get built, and it was now part of a 100-foot long monument to rodent engineering, transforming a sterile reach of Little Hat Creek’s dense willow and birch flats into habitat on steroids. Just a few weeks ago, I spotted several ducks on the pond the dam created. I had never seen waterfowl before this year on the 15 miles of the creek; after all, it was semi-desert, and the thin ribbon of water that defined Little Hat had never been of any interest to a duck. But now, all was changing, and the unexpected was almost becoming expected. 

Just downstream was another dam just like it. The flatwater pool with a glassy surface spanned the distance between the structures. 

The sound, smells, and probably just plain beauty of the setting was enough to wake my catatonic friend. He had obviously had enough at that point of travel in my GMC Yukon. We had driven nearly two bumpy hours to get here, and he had been captured four hours before that. Except for an occasional jumpy reaction to my application of several San Pelligrino bottles of cold river water every 20 minutes to keep him from overheating, he was almost hibernating with apparent depression. 

He was a caged wild animal, hopeless with what his fate may be. Until this very moment, where all would be transformed. 

As I set him on the streambank, he instantly rodent-speed walked to the door-side of the pet carrier, beady eyes scanning what lay before him, and nose twitching to-and-fro in an excited beaver sort of way, I thought. 

“Are you ready, Melanie?” She stood on the streambank about 10 feet upstream, ready to capture some video of the introduction of rodent to river.

“Sure am!”

I reached to open the carrier door. The beaver jumped back a few inches when he saw my hand approach, and then stepped back toward the open gate toward freedom. He took a small, tentative step over the threshold, then two, and then quietly waddled down to the streambank, flat tail dragging, lifeless through the rushes. When he reached the water, he smelled the water once—just once, for a brief second and immediately immersed himself, serenely, perfectly, slowly into his element. Immediately, his tail came to life, the art-form of propulsion and movement that it truly was, guiding him across the flow. He glided just under the surface, wakeless, upstream, barely moving but somehow propelling himself forward, as if to demonstrate to us awkward landlubbers that the waddling rodent animal we had seen on land was now a picture of pure elegance in the pristine perfect waters of a mountain stream. His shadow followed him on an undefined vegetative bottom of the pool, coursing up and down over the undulating and swaying chara, and in another few seconds, he was gone, lost in the shadowed depths of a Little Hat Creek beaver pond.

As Melanie and I stood silently for a few minutes and watched the rhythmic slow-motion whipping of those beds of aquatic greens, there were perhaps a few times we caught a glimpse of what may have been a beaver shadow, but we both knew we may never see him again. 

My hay trucker, Joe, jumped down from his worn looking Peterbilt (“She may be a little rough on the outside, but I just rebuilt her entire insides!”). He handed me my scale tickets. He had just delivered a 23 ton load of certified organic hay from the prairie grasslands of central Montana. 

“I hear you got some beavers colonizing your grazing range,” he said smiling. 

He caught me completely off guard. Usually, we talk about the condition of the roads; Joe has to cross the crest of the Continental Divide 3 times on his hay missions, and they can be pure ice and snow gauntlets. But suddenly our conversation was firmly in beaver territory. I nodded hesitantly, my mind racing, wondering what his take on them was.  Some people were indifferent about the rodents as long as they were “NIMBY” (not in my backyard), but every one of my farm and ranch neighbors is aware of the havoc they can wreak.  Beavers can flood fields, homes, basements, driveways, plug culverts, redirect stream channels and place corrals under 6 feet of water. I’ve witnessed and heard stories time and time again of the property damage a few beavers can inflict in a very short time. 

To many people in rural, and even suburban North America, beavers can be public enemy numero uno. 

We’ve had our own history of dealing with them, and only when we outsmarted them (they are rodents, with rodent-sized craniums, after all) did they move on elsewhere (that may be another newsletter).

But it wasn’t easy. 

I think it would be safe to say that most landowners in Central Idaho were in extirpation mode. Complete removal or slaughter is the only option. Every beaver has a target on his or her back. It’s common to hear them referred to as “sumbitchin’ beavers.”

So, I wondered about Joe, as he shook my hand in greeting, still smiling. I’d worked hard to get beavers to come back, and really didn’t like the idea of someone trapping or shooting them out. I decided to risk it; after all, I’d known Joe for 30 years or so.  

“Yeah. They are doing well. Near as I can tell, we are at around 75 individuals now—from zero. They are fixing miles and miles of our 55 miles of creeks. They are spreading water out across dry meadows, making them green again. They heal exposed erosion scars and are increasing water storage that keeps streams flowing in dry years. Fish are coming back, as well as songbirds. We even spotted a moose this year.”

“That’s fantastic! They are incredible engineers! Hey, I may know where you could get a few more. You interested?”

“What? Are you for real?” A look into his eyes said “yes.” “Well, yeah—I am. I don’t have any beaver live traps anymore. Do you have some?”

“I think I know someone.” He smiled in a sort of—well–clandestine way. 

About 4 months later, Joe called me right before sunup. “Glenn. I think I got a beaver for you. You know Muskrat?”

“Yep. I know him.”

“He’s got one. Can you come get it? Gotta come right now. Here’s his number.”

I’d never really spoken at length to Muskrat, but I knew who he was. He was downriver near Salmon, and was sort of a modern day mountain man. He and his wife love the vast Idaho backcountry and had spent lots of time there, living off the land using traditional gear and clothing they made. The stuff they make is beautiful, yet elegantly utilitarian. While in the valley, they live on a small farm where they tend their livestock and gardens. There, they also make leather gear, saddles and tan hides. 

The day I arrived, it was building up to be warm. In clear azure skies, the early May sun was already up and doing its business. The roosters were crowing and geese were honking. Muskrat stepped out of his cabin, trademark long beard down to his middle over a worn denim shirt and jeans hung by heavy leather suspenders. The authenticity was complete with a tired black cowboy hat and blackened leather packer boots. He wore the same clothes people had in these parts in the 1800s.

“He’s over here,” he gestured with a calloused hand.

“In the pet carrier?” 

“Yep.”

As I loaded him up, Muskrat asked where I was taking him. “Up Hat Creek,” I said. “We’re trying to get some colonies established up there, so the more the merrier!” I smiled.

His face bore a well-whiskered grin. “I sure didn’t wanna kill him. Joe said you might be needin’ some. The little bugger was clogging up ditches down on the Turner place, and Ol’ Dave didn’t wanna put up with him. So he hired me to get him outta there. I got a live catcher that I made here that works pretty well, and this here flag pops up when I got him.” 

I looked at the trap. It was a purely ingenious contraption made of steel rebar and hog panels. “Why the flag?”

“Cause the problem ditch was across the Salmon River. I could see from a hundred yards away to see if I had one. I had to take the canoe across the river to get him.”

“River is pretty dangerous right now with high water. How’d that go?”

“Oh, once I got going it went fine. It was a little tough launching with the contraption and getting pushed off. You want any more of ‘em?”

“Sure. I’ll take all you’ve got.”

I shook his hand and jumped in the Yukon, and directly, he leaned into the window with some parting words: “Hey. Make sure you douse him with some water. Just grab a bottle of river water every now and then. They like it cool and shady. You don’t want the little dude to overheat.”

“I’ll do it.” I looked him in the eye and regarded him for a second. “Thanks again.” 

“No. Thank you.” 

As I drove back up the river road the few hours to our remote Little Hat Ranch, I thought about Muskrat. That guy likes beavers. In fact, he loves all those wild animals. Certainly, he kills a fair share for meat, but I could tell he respected them, deeply. He just had it in him. 

It’s like that with us. Sure, we raise animals for food, but respect runs deep. Anyone who doesn’t respect our beeves, or any animal for that matter, wild or domestic, has no place on Alderspring. 

Muskrat is just one of many unseen and sometimes unlikely partners we have in our remote place in these mountains. Some cut hay for us; some supply us with purebred bulls. Some repair irrigation systems. Some help us freeze brand our calves. The lattice of Alderspring runs thick through these remote communities to other ranches and businesses.

A few weeks later, Muskrat and I had another beaver interaction. I couldn’t get down to his place to get it, so I sent my electrician, coming up to fix a center-pivot irrigator, to get it on the way up from his home base an hour to the north of us. Jared, my electrician, knew Muskrat well, and where he was at, and in a few hours, he drove up on the Ranch as I was weighing cattle with one of my older neighbors—a dyed in the denim black-hatted 5th generation cowboy named Jim. Jim’s family was one of the first settlers in the valley back in the 1850s. I saw the electrician van drive up, just as Jim and I were finishing up at Alderspring’s livestock scales. 

We walked over to the van, and told Jim “I gotta grab a crate from the back.”

“It’s only gonna take a second.” I told him. I swung the bat-wing doors open on the van, and grabbed the crate, and started to carry it off to the workshop. I was bound for the cool concrete floor; the back of the van was pretty warm. 

“I gave him some water, just like Muskrat asked me,” shouted Jared, the electrician.

“Perfect! He looks good. Thanks, Jared!”  

Jim was curiously following at a distance. “What’s in that dang crate, Glenn?”

“You really gotta know?” I knew Jim might not be a fan.

“Yep. I do, partner.”

“It’s a beaver, Jim.”

He stopped walking. It was too much to process and walk at the same time. “You’ve got to be kidding.” 

I turned back to him, crate in hand. “You wanna see him?” 

“Heck no! Have you lost yer mind?”

“I don’t know. Maybe.” I looked back at him under his well-dusted black cowboy hat. He knew and I knew that hat was made of pure beaver fur. Nearly all decent cowboy hats are. And up to this point in life for Jim, they should be made into hats as fast as possible. But something in his smile—although a hesitant sort of quizzical one—encouraged me with a thought: perhaps, he was, from this point on, willing to regard another possibility. 

Because in my mind, it was just that. Beavers could bring possibilities to the landscape we live on that we never even could conceive of…until now. They could singlehandedly repair vast areas of degraded semi-desert rangelands of the West. They had in their unique skillset such a simple, elegant solution: they would hold back the water. And when they did that, all nature could break loose.

Happy Trails. 

Glenn