We knew this path in life was going to be an amazing adventure and events of the afternoon helped prove that to us in a semi-comical way.
One of the B&B best practices we have learned is that professional photography is a must to properly showcase your home to guests. Life has brought lots of photographers into our lives and one of them is a co-worker where I am doing some work at TwinPro Graphics. We had scheduled a weekend visit with The Other Trevor. In this case he is “The Other Trevor” whereas, at the office, I am “The Other Trevor”, however, before this turns into a “who’s on first” skit, let’s get on with the story.
We had started our review of the house and were on the second floor when we looked out one of the bedroom windows to see water in the yard. Now, we had noticed over the last couple days the water in our pond was rising. It had ebbed and flowed a few times in the first couple of weeks, so it seemed to be a regular thing that occurred with the various amounts and intensities of rain. This, however, was a new development and prompted a trip out onto the Elora-Cataract Trailway for a look see.
We went straight to the culvert that allows water to flow from our pond to the larger municipal pond behind us and sure enough, the beavers had been living up to their reputation. The water was visibly higher than usual and with their dam allowing only a trickle to get by. We knew from various discussion with neighbours and the trailway plaque nearby that informed people about the various habits of beavers, that they were sometime frequenters of the area. After scoping things out a bit, The Other Trevor and I headed back home for lunch with Janet. Once we had discussed our action plan for getting some images into our library he headed out to finish the rest of his day.
After clearing the table and tidying up, Janet and I went and got our garden claws to started pulling out branches and other detritus the beavers had used to engineer their culvert blocking structure. It was not long before I realized this was going to be better done by hand from in the water rather than staying nice and dry on the bank. In I went and after a couple hours the job was done. People 1 – Beavers 0. Unfortunately, city slicker Trevor had put his cell phone in his shorts pocket to capture the work for a later blog post. Somewhere about half way through the work I realized this and after a string of profanity that caused a a few ducks to hastily fly away the phone was taken home for the traditional rice bath of hope. Another unfortunate circumstance was that my fancy “Lifeproof” (once waterproof) battery case was very difficult to get off prior to the rice plunge. As it was peeled off the faint sounds of electric crackling could be heard. For technology of this nature, that pretty much amounts to a death rattle. So while we walked away from the scenario with a triumphant feeling of accomplishment from saving the homestead from a slow painful death by flooding, we were a little dejected by the knowledge that the beavers had also scored one. Beavers 1 – iPhone 0.
As we walked back home with our tools in hand and heads a little low, a lady using the trail for a hike quipped, “Ah… A working walk today.” We stopped to fill her in on our recent move and plans that until now had not included a turf war with beavers. A friendly smile came over her face and her response to us was, “That’s life living in the country.” There was no sarcasm in either her words or smile, it felt more like welcoming words of advice. In a strange way it lifted my spirits. It felt like we had just passed our first country living rite of passage. Sure, there was a technological casualty. Sure, we made up the solution as we went along. And, perhaps most importantly, we did it together.