Monday, March 9, 2009

Beavercam is up tonight!

  Pushing sand and mud from upstream.  When you step back and consider the water channel contours you can see what an impressive job these animals do.  Pushing mud from the upstream side deepens the pool.  Sticks and mud and a little work.  The vertical white stakes are beaver bark-stripped twigs.  I put them there for scale.
  The new camera position is going to be from the right side of this shot looking left up the break in the dam that they are repairing.  I'm sure it's sealed by now, but I will unseal it.

  He looks mad to me, does he look mad to you?  I thought hot, young, wet, hairy Beavers frolicking in the rushing water would seem a little happier.

  A Tourist.  Merely a Nutria.

  Civil Engineer.

  I jammed my big log down into the mucky mound.....and set the beavercam to photo hot, wet, hairy beavers....well...repairing their dam I had just knocked a hole in.  I've torn a hole in their big dam every day and dropped 100 yards of dammed creek by about a foot or so.  Every night they rebuild it.  (They really ARE busy.  Wonder if they wear little hardhats?)
  Another fun afternoon in the woods.  They ought to be getting photographed about every 20 seconds right about NOW!
  Getting into the groove shooting the woodlot where the new Tyler Art Museum will be built.  I crossed the creek today and turned around and found not one, but TWO nice photographs just waiting.  More elevation than I thought from over there.  Crossing back there was a big snapping turtle on his tiptoes with his nose just out of the water in the pool above the beaver dam.  He pulled back under, trying that invisibility thing, but I was on to him.  Deertracks as well, fresh ones, in town.  Trees are budding out and dogwoods working up.  First mosquitos.  As always, trying to learn to photograph.  All Deardorff 5X7 view camera with sheet film off a tripod....except for the BEAVERCAM!
  I'll post photos of hot, young, wet, hairy beavers tomorrow.  Maybe a scan of one of my proofs.
  All for art!

Update:  Looking through the files I think I count two nutria and two different beavers.  No cam tonight- I ran deercams instead.  One lousy deer out of nearly 600 files.  Beavercam up again tomorrow night.

Update II:  Nice rain this morning.  Creek will be up and running.  Going in with the BeaverCam if I get a break to cut the dam.  Cam support post moved.  Whole area might be underwater, now that I think about it.  Rain for the next few days.

9 comments:

Bryan said...

Let the record show that I am in full support of the BeaverCam!

Unknown said...

I vote for all the "hot,wet,hairy,young beavers" you can photograph.

Anonymous said...

You had *entirely* too much fun writing this one. :)

Heath J said...

Those searching "hot,young,hairy, wet beavers" Will be getting some fun google results because of this.

catfish said...

I hope they filled out the requisite government forms before conducting engineering work!!

Old NFO said...

too funny, bet you're going to get a LOT of hits with that title...LOL

Robert Langham said...

Wet, hot, young, hairy beavers won't get as many hits as a link at Sayuncle, plus the hittees, (or hitters) will be a little disappointed.....unless they are weirder than we think by a couple of orders of magnitude.
Surely not...

Anonymous said...

Back before terrorist were really an issue, you could actually go and buy dynamite fairly easily. We used to put several sticks into the beaver dam leaving one visible. Then we would back up 50yds or so and shoot the exposed stick with a rifle. Never had more fun in my life.

phlegmfatale said...

Maybe they don't look happier because they are just not that into other hot, young wet hairy beavers...