a porcupine for Gretchen and a beaver for me Friday, May 16 2025
setting: rural Hurley Township, Ulster County, New York
While I was working from home in the laboratory this morning, Gretchen send me a message from her phone of a porcupine she'd stumbled upon somewhere in the forest south of our house while she was walking Charlotte. Charlotte wasn't with her when she encountered the porcupine, and I got the sense that Gretchen waited for the porcupine to be safely up a tree by the time Charlotte arrived.
At the end of the workday, I immediately loaded up the Bolt with supplies and the dogs and drove up to our Adirondack cabin. (Gretchen stayed behind, as she had a reproductive freedom event to attend in Manhattan on Sunday.) I carried so much chili and so many avocados that I didn't feel the need to stop for supplies at the Hannaford in Cairo.
Temperatures were balmy at the cabin, which one might normally consider a good thing. But at this time of year it meant that the biting flies (including, but not limited to, mosquitoes) were out in force, making the outdoors a miserable place to spend any time. I hurriedly walked with both dogs down to our dock on Woodworth Lake, thinking I'd be safe once I got there. But the air was so still that the fuckers followed me right out onto it.
When I arrived at the dock, I saw two beavers out in the water. On was several hundred feet to the north, though the other, bigger one (a kind of beaver who always gets the name "Madyson" in our lake) was swimming about nearby, just south of the dock. I trained my telephoto-lens-equipped Nikon camera on her and shot video, hoping to catch her in the act of violently slapping the surface of the water with her tail when the dogs arrived. But instead I got some video of her doing something more interesting: eating some bright green vegetation (lily pads perhaps?) she was holding in her hands. She never did slap the water, but instead swam back and forth a couple times and then went to a patch of bright green on the shoreline to the south, probably to get more of the plant she'd been eating.
Back at the cabin, I heated up some chili, mixed myself several adult drinks, and ensured the evening would end early by ingesting 150 mg of diphenhydramine, which I only take on weekends these days.
The porcupine Gretchen stumbled upon today. Click to enlarge.
A frame of the video I shot of Madyson the Beaver today. Click to enlarge.
Video of Madyson the Beaver. You can hear the sound of the dogs arriving as I shot it. I couldn't hold the camera still because of the misery of the insects biting me. Later when Madyson starts swimming quickly, you can see a cloud of mosquitoes flying along with her.
The view across the lake this evening. Click to enlarge.
