Downsizing

Last Thursday, June 9, 2011, while at the beaver pond on my farmer neighbor’s land, I espied Bucky Beaver doing his thing, namely adding a bit of building material to the blockage of the sluice pipe under the road.  This blockage has caused the water level to rise somewhere around a foot on the north side of the roadway.  Bucky’s plan of a higher water level also caused the pond to enlarge as it overflowed its banks.  All well and good as far as Bucky was concerned, but this plan was not acceptable by Mr. Farmer.  He didn’t believe Bucky needed the extra room as it was being subtracted from his crop field.

Monday, June 13^th, when I arrived at the pond on my almost daily journey I discovered a waterhole.  That hole in the water, with the surrounding water circulating in a counter-clockwise direction, is located at the end of the sluice pipe where Bucky had his blockage.  Some act of man or nature apparently caused Bucky’s hard construction work to disappear.  This caused a sudden water flow from the north side of the road to the south side.

This is a view of the same water hole, or vortex, from a slightly different angle.  Hundreds of gallons of water are disappearing down that hole every minute.

The discharge end of the sluice pipe on the south side of the road appears like this.  The water flow is quite spectacular to see.  That green dashed line on the side of the pipe that is now approximately 4” underwater, was about 8” above the waterline the day before yesterday.  The green line is very close to the identical height of the dam just out of sight in this photo, which means the water is flowing through the pipe faster than it can flow over the dam causing the level to rise.

In this view the original dam is over to the left side where the water is flowing over the top of it hiding the actual dam.

This is one last view of the 8” diameter hole in the water caused by the rapid drainage of the north side of the pond.  It remains to be seen what Bucky’s response to this catastrophe will be?  To be continued, someday.