Creepy Hollow…

The Lands set forth below our feet and past the tree line which ventures into a small vally with a creek, that our house sits on, is known as Creepy Hollow.

We are fortunate enough to own it all to prevent other developers from coming in and knocking down trees and stacking multi-level houses on top of each other.

In this four city block range of land, we have things pretty good here. One day while touring Creepy Hollow along our phone line access line. (Our phone line runs close to three football field lengths to the street behind our house for high speed access) I decided to just walk the length for the hell of it. I ran across an interesting situation.

When I got to our creek area which is a shallow creek I noticed some of the trees where dying so checked them out.

The bark has been stripped from around the tree with wood chips all over the ground. The creek was dredged with channels, and trees that where half buried where cut through.

So with the marks, channels and groomed creek structure it led to the little culprits, We now officially have beavers to add to our list of critters residing in Creepy Hollow.

Raccoons, porcupines, deer, mice, moles, weasels, squirrels, chipmunks, and various seasonal birds and year around avian guys such as ravens, crows, Bald eagles, hawks, humming birds, etc.

Being on an Island, I was kind of surprised at the addition of critters, more then likely displaced from the explosion of development that has been going on. Developers clear cutting tens of acres in one shot. A lot of critters get displaced in one clearing.

More often then not I tend to see additional activity in our once non-active plot of forest. As the years and additional development goes on I start seeing more things here and there.

This place is not without it's Dead Zone.. Which consists of approximately 80-120 yard radius around the house due to one very aggressive cat which will hunt down and kill anything it can wrap its claws around.

We are talking a black and white cat, average size, not large by any means which fends it’s food bowl against raccoons almost three times it’s size.

The Raccoons are at a disadvantage in that the cat was here first, and they where small when they got “pushed” onto Creepy Hollow. At the time the cat was about the same size, the cat was vastly more aggressive and would kick their butts on a weekly basis.

Now that they are three times its size, all they know is there is a psycho with food over there. Seeing a cat beat up a Mom with Kits (aren’t mom’s supposed to be super aggressive?)

Even came home one night to see the Mom and three kits hanging out on the end of a branch with the cat on the inside part of the branch not letting them get off the branch. Cornering the coons till I came home to take over.

The cat rubbed up against me and purred then handed the task off to me when I went to see what was going on. I of course let them go. They still make attempts at the cat food, but more often then not, the Cat is in the area and won’t let them have any.

Beavers on the other hand. This may explain the sudden decrease in frog population. I was thinking of reseeding the creek and pond areas with frogs because I like to listen to them at night, now with Beavers, this may be interesting to see if they wipe out the frog population or not. They are however legally doing what was illegal for me to do. Groom the creek.

So though they are harming a handful of trees, they are taking care of something the county said I could not do.

The County also stated though, if I did anything to clear or "modify the creek and or ponds" that I would be in some "nutritionally corrected output" These guys however apparently get to do anything they want because they don’t have options for legal representation and as such as protected class of U.S. citizens which get to do whatever they want provided they are not harming the operations of U.S./state/local levels of financial institutions or transportation infrastructure.

So, it seems the creek is getting groomed, and well the state can’t do anything about it. Funny how things work out, apparently if you ignore a situation long enough it does fix itself.

Needless to say, I am publicly denying any bribery attempts or verbal agreements with the beavers to have the beavers come in and groom my creek, pond and clean up and eliminate the underbrush near the creek beds and pond edges.

Though I also am doing nothing to prevent them from living tax free on the section of land, that I have stewardship over as well.

I didn’t do anything, you didn’t see me do anything, you can’t prove anything in a court of law. Also they are under my, um “Protection”, yah that’s it. “Protection” so you can’t move them or tell them they have to conform to any building codes.