“Aaahhh! We’ve been logged!”
“Huh? What are you talking about?” asked Linda, as she bolted out of the bedroom to stand beside me in front of our picture window. We were both staring and twisting fists into our eye sockets, trying to wring out the residue of sleep.
“Those dang beavers moved in on us last night and commenced clear-cutting our lot,” I said. Three large aspens that we had nursed from wee saplings lay neatly fallen across our lawn. When I threw on my boots and mackinaw and went to survey the damage, I found the beavers had also felled and limbed a half-dozen smaller aspens on the border of our lot that we share with a neighbour to the north. Further surveying revealed two large weeping willows on the lot boundary that we share with a neighbour to the south. They had been felled, bucked, skidded, and floated across the lake to where the beaver colony lived. There was nothing left of the willows but two large pointy stumps and a pile of wood chips. In addition to all of the cutting, the beavers had constructed three large skid roads from their logging area across our lot to the lake. In forest engineering lingo, we had been developed. The beaver’s intentions were clear.
“Must have been a lot of them show up for work last night,” Linda said. “What are we going to do? We can’t let them clear-cut every aspen, birch, and willow tree from our lot. We have been babying our trees since we moved here 20 years ago.”
“Well, the last time we had beavers move in on us I put stove pipes around all our trees to discourage them,” I said.
“Yeah, but that was almost 20 years ago and our grove of trees is twice the size now,” said Linda. “A 10-inch stovepipe won’t come close to fitting any of our trees, and you know chicken wire doesn’t work.”
“Yeah, they just cut through chicken wire like they own pliers,” I said. “I guess we’ll have to conjure up another form of discouragement.” I could feel a deviant smile beginning to curl the corner of my lip. “Heh, heh, heh: I love a good contest with Mother Nature or one of her agents,” I muttered.
September in the Cariboo is what we call Indian summer. It brings bright cool days stuffed so full of autumn colours that your eyes almost feel assaulted. The nights are also clear, cold, and bright with moonlight. And so, every evening at dusk, the beavers would sail across the lake in the bright moonlight and descend upon our lakefront lot. I started my discouragement campaign by waiting for them in the swamp-birch brush along the shore. When they would come in to land, I would jump out and holler like a banshee. The landing beaver would swap ends, crash dive, and smash the water loudly with its tail. It didn’t take long and the beaver would be attempting a landing at another point along the beachhead.
After a couple of nights of doing this and failing miserably to discourage the beavers, they began to get aggressive. I would stand on the dock and they would swim up to within a half-dozen feet of me and smash the water with their tails. I would yell and jump back and they would come and do it again, trying to drive me away from the shore. I would shine a bright flashlight right in their beady little eyes and they would swim right up to the light. You could literally see the hostility in their eyes before they would dive and smash the water with their tails to drive me back. Their aggression got my aggression going. Hurled rocks were soon involved, and eventually a pellet gun. Neither worked. I smacked one large fella right in the head with a stone and he dove. I screamed in triumph: “That’ll teach you to fool with me, you little bucked-tooth logging maniac.” I turned to stomp victoriously off the dock. I looked over my shoulder to see the same beaver swimming with determined purpose straight past the end of the dock, heading for one of his skid trails on the beachhead.
About a week into the beaver battle, our son was leaving for his graveyard shift at the sawmill at around 10 p.m., and he nearly tripped over a huge beaver right up beside the driveway where our vehicles were parked. It was a dominant adult and it was obviously cruising for new timber prospects for his logging crew. The large aspens that line our driveway would easily destroy a vehicle if they were felled on one, so we reluctantly called the game department, which lined up a trapper for us. That was the way our last beaver battle ended too, but not before they dammed a local creek and took out the railway tracks, derailing a train just across the lake.
You have heard it said: “As eager as a beaver.” Well, I’ve learned that beavers are all of that and they are persistent too, not to mention aggressive. Once their sights are set on a project they will throw themselves at it until either “it” or “they” are done. They are incredible animals, but judgment does not seem to be their long suit. They are task-driven to the extreme, kinda like me.
I think most adults who graced my life when I was growing up taught me that I should strive to be an “eager beaver.” What popped out of the mould of childhood development was an extremely task-oriented and driven person in the likes of me. And I can be just about as persistent and aggressive as a beaver too (not to mention obnoxious). For the main part, being task-driven has stood me in good stead, making me a likable person to parishioner and employer alike. God only knows, I love to be liked. But like the beavers in my life, sometimes my judgment is lacking and I get seriously trapped.
Recently I have been enjoying the portion of the Psalter that is classified as the Songs of Assent (120-134). One of these songs puts it so simply: “Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labour in vain. Unless the Lord guards the city, the guard keeps watch in vain. It is in vain that you rise up early and go late to rest, eating the bread of anxious toil; for He gives sleep to His beloved” (127:1-2).
What I think I need to bring to the pond in which I live and work is a little Psalm 127 judgment. It’s not what I get done that is so important; it is whose work it is. As a task-driven person, I often forget to inquire of God concerning the task. At best, I get beavering away at a project, inviting God to make my agenda His agenda. The Psalmist labels that approach to life and work as vanity. And when I get seriously trapped out, in the long arm of the night, I know that it is … that being task-driven is very often being driven by my own vanity.
