Over the holidays we visited the Matthei Botanical Gardens in Ann Arbor. In addition to the festive season, they were also celebrating the return of the beavers. 150 years ago, beavers were trapped into extinction around Ann Arbor and this last fall signs of their return reappeared. These signs include numerous felled trees, a dam and their lodge. The gardeners have welcomed the beavers return, but the destruction that they create must give them some pause.

Pictured below is a Mississippi River beaver that we saw years ago. It is seen from above sitting at the foot of Mel Price lock and dam. It seemed stunned and just sat there longer than we cared to watch. It might have gone through one of the lock’s open sluice gates and had been knocked about doing so. What does a beaver say when it hits a concrete wall? Dam! Years earlier still, a quite young Daniel told us another dam related joke, “Mom, do you know that there are two meanings for the word dam? One is a concrete wall, while the other is a bad word. Do you know how you tell the difference between the two? When it is the wall, you say dam. When it is the bad word, you say DAM!”