I am normally an animal lover.....

But if I catch Mr. Beaver in my yard he has it coming! I don't think that he is one of the protected animals at our house......and even if he is, he's toast if he eats another tree in my yard. Let's backtrack a little here. Thursday morning I was in the kitchen and looked out the window and saw this:




Now it was 77 degrees the day before, sunny skies, no wind, etc. At first I thought I was losing it. Surely I would have noticed such a storm. But as I got to looking closer I saw shavings around the trunk. No natural disaster that I know of ever leaves shavings around the tree it knocks down.......beavers do though! Beavers are really fond of sweetgum trees. So if you have those trees you have to protect them like this:

Because the beavers will eat all the bark around it until it dies.

After breakfast the girls and I headed out to examine the damage. Here's what we found:

Now he eat two cedar trees. This one he had the decency to take with him:

But this one he left behind.

And here's the proof that the little booger was hard at work:

Nice......

Now this happened Wednesday night but my computer got a nasty virus and wouldn't let me do anything. And to my surprise I was able to read a lot and get it off all by myself! Guess I'm not as dumb as I thought I was......of course it only took me two days, ha! Anyway, I guess the beaver is going to halfway clean up after himself after all. This morning half the tree was gone, only he left behind several branches. Good thing Christmas is right around the corner. I'll have some fresh garland and wreaths out of cedar. They sure will smell good!