A Breached Dam

Morgan was driving out and passed me as I parked my truck at the side of the road. He stopped and addressed me,' The beavers are very active,' he said.

'Yes', I replied, 'the evenings are drawing in and they are thinking of preparing for winter. Have you seen much work on trees?'

'Yes, and someone has breached one of the dams', said Morgan.

'Ah, I think that must just be the result of all that rain.'

'It looks as though a person has done it.' And with that he wound up his window and drove on.

Here, then, is the overflow as it was this morning:

So, the question that I had ignored in my mind was 'Did the beavers do it?

Bob Arnebeck has something to say about the subject of otters working on beaver dams in his blog at http://www.geocities.com/bobarnebeck/otthole.html, but I must look into the question of how beavers regulate the level of water in the ponds created by their dams: something to do with water levels in the entrance canal to their burrows I should guess.