If you subscribe to my newsletter (hint hint!), you’ll already have heard a snippet of our beaver tales. For the rest of you, let me catch you up to date.
My family has a cottage on a lovely lake in the Kawartha region of Ontario. It’s part of the Trent-Severn Waterway, and sits just to the west of Lock 32, the first lock in the system, a scenic 386 km long canal system connecting Georgian Bay to Lake Ontario. Fun fact, if you’re of a certain age, you’ll know this spot, made famous by the Tragically Hip.
Some folks think Bobcaygeon is the inspiration for the town of Silver Lake, the small Ontario lake town where much of Skipping Stones takes place. And while it’s true that there may be some small resemblances, my Silver Lake really is a composite of so many Muskoka and Kawartha Lake towns.
One of the joys of having a lakefront cottage is the boathouse that comes along with it. And while that boathouse is temporarily void of boats (something we need to fix!), it becomes an interesting potential safe place for wildlife.
Bass like our quiet, sheltered and shallow bay, and should be making their nests (yes, fish make nests!) soon. We have a resident mink, some beautiful trumpeter swans and more Canadian Geese than we can shake a stick at. And of course, Harry the heron – which is a story for another day.
But back to the beaver.
Almost every evening, a beaver swims by our boat house, climbs up the bank and then waddles back into the water – sometimes taking a swim through the boathouse before heading off. All of our trees are safely wrapped in chicken wire, but one of our neighbour’s bushes ended up in another neighbour’s boathouse in May.
We are doing everything we can to discourage this busy little beaver. When we see him dive under the water in the direction of the boathouse, we run down and stomp on the floorboards. We often see neighbours doing the same. While he is our national animal, nobody wants this poor guy to move in. I have an old clock-radio playing inside 24/7 in hopes that the tinny music will not be to his liking. Because it’s not incomprehensible that overnight he’ll build a nest. It’s happened before.
Busy as a beaver is a saying that is strongly rooted in fact. I remember my father marvelling at how much work was done overnight one year. The beaver had made a huge pile of woody debris, branches, and logs. Dad dismantled it, only to have it rebuilt the next night. I told him that if we applied the Turkish rules I learned, the beaver had clearly built a “gecekondu”, or an accommodation built overnight.
Why do Turks have a special word for this? There is (or more likely was – my experience is from the mid 1980s) a legal loophole whereby if you start building after dusk and move into a completed house before dawn the next day without having been noticed by the authorities, they are not permitted to tear the building down, and you therefore have a home! Entire shantytowns emerged due to this loophole. I told Dad this with a grin – he was not amused!
The good news is that beavers breed in the winter and so they’re not looking to build a home for their family. In the meantime, we’ll enjoy his evening visits as long as they last – and as long as he doesn’t stay the night.There are no gecekondu in Another Glass of Tea, but if you’re interested in learning more about Turkey, you can purchase it in paperback or e-book form. Oh – and here’s a convenient subscription link you can pass along to friends – sign up and you’ll also get a bonus epilogue chapter!
