Busy is as Busy Does

There we were, face-to-face, eyeball-to-eyeball (well, not exactly) with a wild beast. Its dark shape loomed directly in our path. Susan and I were literally stopped on our tracks—sort of. Its beady eyes occasionally glanced at us; assessing us as a potential meal I figured. We, in turn, were more curious than terrified.
Without saying a word we glanced at each other when the creature flashed its orange-stained incisors. They were huge! Yet, here was this magnificent animal, chocolate-colored fur gleaming in the twilight, quietly coming to dinner. How did it maintain such a wonderful coat on a diet of dandelions?
What did it see when it took our measure? We watched the animal glide effortlessly through the wetlands pond. This is a favorite spot of ours in the Cuyahoga Valley National Park, walking along the railroad tracks just north of Station Road Bridge. From the tip of the animal’s rounded muzzle, back nearly to its undersized ears, it was covered with duckweed. The neon-green colored weed contrasted with the brown fur, giving the animal an other-worldly appearance.
It maneuvered to the pond’s edge. It was now less than 25 feet away. We held our breath. Prothonotary warblers and red-headed woodpeckers darted about, vying for our attention. As it emerged from the water its size astonished us. This guy was at the upper end of its species-average (30-inches long and 40 pounds) for North America.
As the beaver slowly munched on the vegetation, I could not help but think about the boys with Lewis and Clark from the Corps of Discovery. Numerous mentions are made in diaries from that adventure describing how tasty the beaver’s tail was. To me, it looked like a deflated automobile tire—21st Century thinking I suppose.
Occasionally the beaver raised on its haunches to its full height and looked at us. What did it see? Two bipeds, one mostly blue with a flesh-colored topknot; the other purple and blue with a black topknot. Did it care to separate male from female? Both aliens would appear to have huge eyeballs, perfectly round and cylindrical in shape, black in color.
The beaver watched us; we watched the beaver. It didn’t care; we were enthralled. Eventually it made its way back into the pond. It cruised about 15 feet and stopped for dessert of moss and bark from a tree stump. Maybe the most fascinating part of this close encounter of the furred kind was that as the beaver removed the bark from the tree, it made no noise. We had expected, having seen numerous piles of chips around beaver-felled trees, that it would make plenty of chopping sounds. Woodpeckers of all species—particularly pileated—sound like thunderstorms compared with this guy.
It seemed to pry the bark from the tree, making an eight-inch diameter shield-like design. Then, off it meandered toward some raucous Canada geese, hardly living up to its billing—busy as a beaver.