By: Bears Butt
HI, my name is Willard and I’d like to tell you about my buddies here at the Bay who got saved from the oil spill earlier this year.
You see, all of us were trying to figure out how we could disrupt the farm just up stream from the North Marina of Willard Bay but in all our efforts it seemed there was this “one guy” who kept trying to make things ugly for us. Every time we built the dam up a little, the next day it would be totally wrecked. We sent in several of our best design team members and a big crew of construction guys and they would spend all night long building and building.
Just when we thought we had things under control….BLAM! One of them would get caught by a toe or a foot and end up having to be rushed to the medics for surgical removal of the metal devise held to his foot. More often than not the medical team would have to go to the dam site for their work to be accomplished as the metal devise would not go down stream more than a few stick lengths.
Times were getting really tough for us. We felt the need to build up a good dam at the mid section of the stream so our population could expand in that direction. It only seemed right to us and we had some highly anxious families ready and willing to make the move. The only element keeping them from that move was that “one guy”.
So, the planning crew met several times down on the big waters of the Bay and made a plan that could possibly change the course of what was happening upstream. It was finally decided that a tunnel could be dug to the side of the main stream bed from the big waters edge, up and under the noisy sector where the rumblings of people movers continually traversed. If the tunnel could be dug deep enough then the people movers would not crush it. And so the plan began.
The digging of the tunnel was going very well and progress made continually until one night when a discovery was made that blocked the way. The engineers said the blockage would have to be removed, to dig under it would mean the tunnel would be too deep on the other side of the noisy sector corridor.
Some of the workers tried their best to gnaw through the big tree root but only managed to damage their incisors and required much care in the intensive tooth repair center (ITRC).
There was a need for a big time beaver to get the call and he had to come from a great distance to be here: Paul Bunyon Beaver, the Rat, (PBR was his nickname), the largest beaver of all of the tribe was brought in for his council and he decided he could get under the root causing the blockage and lift it up and out of the way with his back muscles, enough as to allow the continuance of the tunnel and the rest would be history.
None of the Engineers nor design team had ever encountered such a tough root system as this one. They all thought a continual chewing would eventually cause the root to be gnawed through as is always the case with tunneling. You know, Put your shoulder to the wheel and push along!
With several of the crew in the ITRC now, about the only thing to try was Paul Bunyons idea. And so, a lot of material was removed both above and below the root and Paul Bunyon was called to crawl in and under the root to see what he could do. He had to move it at least the distance of half his body thickness or his work would be to no avail.
Paul Bunyon was on the site with all his colleagues on the night the root was to be moved. A briefing was given on just what the engineers were to watch for as the root was moved and just when to tell Paul Bunyon to stop. When enough is enough, well, it’s enough!
There were quite a few of us on the scene that night and Paul Bunyon Beaver was the man, err Beaver, to get the job done and done right. I have seen Paul Bunyon Beaver fall a cottonwood six foot thick and he did it in two hours, all by himself! I’m telling you there was never a sight like that one in all my born days. That tree fed 136 families for three winters straight. We ended up calling that area Cottonwood Bottoms (as opposed to Cottonwood Heights).
Remember me? Willard? I’ve been talking so long I thought maybe you had forgotten who was telling this story. Let me continue.
Everything was ready when Paul Bunyon Beaver crawled into his position and made ready for the command to push up. When the chiefs of the engineering staff called for the move, Paul Bunyon gave it all he had to push that root up and out of the way. He only let out one grunt that I heard when suddenly a gush of root liquid came blasting out of that cracking root!
The spray was as ugly as could be and I scrambled for high ground and away from most of the spray. What an ugly, stinking mess was spraying out from the side of that root! YUK! And if it got on your fur it stuck like no bodies business.
Paul Bunyon Beaver came out from under that spray like the dickens and headed straight for the big water, coughing and spitting all the time. Other engineers were doing the same and trying to get the sinking stuff out of their eyes. This was not a time for panicking but panic we did! Beavers of every work life scattered in every direction. I made it out with only a slight spray of stinking stuff on my backside. I consider myself very lucky as others were covered in the mess.
The spray continued for many nights and soon the sticky stuff had filled the last dam we had before the little stream entered the big water. It was even spilling over the overflow of that as the bravest of the brave worked to plug up the holes and make the dam taller and taller. Such brave, but dumb workers they were. No extra pay, just more work in an every increasing ugly environment. They got so sticky, none of the other beavers, myself included, would even talk to them at Beaver Dave’s tavern after work.
And then one day, one of the normals, the people who we see every day at the Big Water stopped to see what the heck was causing us to build such a big dam and he began to yell and stomp and scream to the top of his lungs. We all hid out in the deep grass and into our dens away from the sticky water.
It wasn’t long before there were so many of them people around we thought there was going to be another boat Regatta at the big water. Something that hasn’t happened in so long I forgot why we didn’t like them in the first place.
There were people with wires and people with long poles and people with blow up things they tossed into the sticky waters and people with boots on wading where we like to swim and people with masks covering their faces and funny lights flashing all day and night keeping us all awake and confused. It was crazy!
And then, not too soon after all of the people started showing up, here came some with nets and poles to catch us with. Most of us hid out real good because we knew how, but those dummies trying to keep the dam built up were the ones that got all caught up. They just weren’t told in time to stay put and they would be alright…but no….they got captured and hauled off some place never to be seen again.
I heard from my Great Great Great Great Great Great Great Gandpappy Beaver a story about how people catch up our kind and take their hides off and stretch them pert near as big as the side of my own house. Then the hides would be sold to the highest bidder and he would make a hat out of it. What a creepy thing to think about. Did our friends, the hard but dumb workers get their hides all skinned off and such? Will we ever seen them again?
Each one of them were put into cages like this one and put into a big old truck and that was the last we saw of them. At least the last I saw of them. I was going to get out of there before I was caught up and put in one of them wire things. I scrambled and made it.
But not so for several more. They captured up about six of my friends and all of them were gone! In the meantime the rest of the clan had to fend for themselves. That part of the place we called home was no place to be at, what with all the hub-bub going on. Too many people stomping and calling out and yelling and doing stuff that us beavers have no business of knowing. We met over at the tall willow North of there.
And talked about what we could do. I assured them there were two places I was never going to go again…one, up the stream where the “one guy” played and over by the place where Paul Bunyon Beaver dun split the root.
Well, there you have if right from the Beavers mouth. Six of my brothers were taken from the big water and who really knows what happened to them.
I came across some paper floating in the water about a month or so ago and saw one of my buddies pictures on it. If I could of only been able to read what it said, I’d guess since they didn’t look like they were as spread out as my Great Great Great Great Great Great Great Grandpappy Beaver once told me, they must have been cleaned up and sent to another water place to start over with their lives.
_____________________
So there you have the story of 2013, about the beavers of Willard Bay. Are they the real heroes people make them out to be, some calling them “Beaveros”? Or were they just the rodents doing what they do and they just happened to capture up a bunch of spilled diesel before it got into the main body of water called Willard Bay?
As for me, “one guy”, I’m very glad those pesky little creatures of the streams and lakes are gone to better places. I’m hoping they were not relocated to a place that will cause someone else to be called “One Guy”!
Bears Butt
December 29, 2013
Utah Fishing Reports
