On a recent trip to the East Coast, we paid a visit to Dad and Lynne in Elizabethtown, NY. On our way back to the house on our last day, we stopped by a park in Keene Valley to check out some beaver dams. (I’d recently recommended the IMAX film "Beavers," so the little critters were on everyone’s mind.)

The construction was pretty amazing! They’d made several ponds and despite the installation of several "beaver deceivers"–pumps designed to lower the level of the resulting ponds so that the beavers would think their dam was broken–the beavers seemed to be running the show.

We even saw one of them just as we were about to leave. The dude was slapping the water with his tail and everything! (Everyone initially thought that it was just me or my brother throwing rocks.)