New Neighbors?

As some of you know there is a smallish pond across the street from my house. During the summer we really can't see it from the window (too many trees in the way), but once the leaves have fallen, there it is again!

So I'm driving home the other day, going past the pond (which is at the bottom of a near verticle 30 ft. embankment) when I noticed this strange mound out in the water. My first thought was that it couldn't possibly be a beaver, but maybe there was a great blue heron nesting out there. So to Google I turn, and to my surprise I learn that herons nest in trees. I do some more looking for birds that nest in the water but I didn't find to much information.

I drove by again and saw that there were a couple smaller mounds out there as well. Weird. Who ever heard of a bird that makes different sized nests? Could it be a beaver?.... Naw.

Today I climbed down the ditch to the pond (getting down is easy, getting back up can be tricky) to see what I could see.

Okay. So now I'm thinking that it is, indeed, a beaver lodge. Why a beaver has chosen to live in the pond across the street, surrounded by a neighborhood and next to a 55 mile an hour road, I will never understand. Of course this means that we can now add a beaver to our list of neighbors: a skunk that routinely digs up my yard, 2 or 3 raccoons that live in the vacinity (and sometimes our front yard), a opossum that occassionly likes our garage, and the muskrat that I've seen in the pond. Are we lucky or what?

In the next picture, if you look closely on the right hand side you can see one of the smaller mounds. My mother has informed me that beavers store food in smaller mounds.*

And while I was contemplating how to get back up to the road I spotted this....

The Kidlet carved her pumpkin all by herself this year. Why won't she stop growing up?


And she was a ninja!
MP3 had a super warm devil hat that my Mom made to keep his ears warm. I just happened to have red mittens for him, too. He was so happy to put them on: he laughed and laughed and clapped and clapped! We got a little cold, but had fun! At least it wasn't snowing and/or hailing like it has the last 2 years! The kidlet didn't have to cover up her costume with a winter jacket!! Hooray! Just a sweatsuit underneath and she survived the trip around the subdivision. Isn't Michigan wonderful?

* I honestly don't think that I'll ever outgrow the belief that my mother knows everything!