Beaver Beach

Yadkin River (West of Winston-Salom, NC) July 10th 2009 7:30pm

So many cool things have happened the last couple of days on the river, but I want to write about what happened in the last 10 mins. The boys started writing articles from there experiences on the river so far, and I had to grab some of my stuff about 50 ft down the river bank. I saw a little beaver swimming a little ways down river and heading my way. I decided to stay still and wait to see how close it was going to come.
I was about 5 ft off the river and on a bank that rose 3ft up off of the river. The beaver swam 3ft off shore right pasted me and slowed down. I didn't want ot move at all, not even my head, because I didn't want it to notice me. But, it let me turn my head a little at a time, and then an ammo can slammed by my group of boys and the beaver turned around and swam away faster than it came. It stopped about 15 ft down river from me and came to shore and I couldn't see it anymore. So I walked very slowly over to where it was to see if it had went in a hole, swam under water, or maybe was chilling by the edge.
I came up to where it disappeared out of my sight and still didn't see it so I inched my way closer to the edge and saw some of the leaves of the weeds moving; the beaver was right at the top edge of the slope, 4ft from me, munching on the leaves. It didn't notice me and I watched it slowly eating the leaves for 10 mins. I slowly inched my way to get a better view.
I was 3ft from the edge and standing very still when the beaver saw some better looking leaves right in front of me. The beaver, with its short front legs, climbed over the edge and stopped to eat more leaves 2 ft in front of me. I was struggling to stay still this whole time because of bugs landing on me and the natural sway of my body, but now adding the raised heart rate and excited nerves made it really hard to not move. If I would have moved the beaver would be gone.
A few more minutes passed as I got to see its flat paddle tail up close and its little front paws feeding its buck teeth. The beaver was grazing and inching its way closer to me, focusing only on the food in front of him and ignoring the big tree of a man standing now only 1ft in front of him. I was enjoying this too much to disrupt the beaver, of try to catch it, or to punt it half way across the river; I only wanted to observe this awesome creature up close it its own habitat, doing its own routines.
I wasn't sure how close it would get or how close I wanted it to get. I know I didn't want it to walk over my foot if it got that close. I was thinking it might get that close because the leaves went right up to my feet. It did get closer and started walking past my foot only 6 inches away and I diceded that that was close enough. I stepped away gently and the beaver franticly ran away tumbing over the edge of the slope into the river water and then dove out of sight.
I had the biggest grin on my face as I walked back over to my group of boys who were writing their articles. I couldn't stop grinning and had to break their hard working silence and share what just happend. I then joined then by writing this great experience down.