GRAND MARAIS, Minn. _ Chew on this:
A battle against beavers is brewing in this Lake Superior town where, in recent years, the bucktoothed critters have been breeding, building a lodge in the marina and biting trees into pencil-shaped stumps all over the city.
This fall, the beavers may have become a little too eager. Under the cover of night, they crossed bustling Hwy. 61 and gnawed down birch, poplar, mountain ash and even someone's apple tree.
"When we started losing trees up across the road," city Parks Manager Dave Tersteeg said with a shake of his head, "I thought, 'Nothing is safe.' "
So the city has been hurriedly armoring tree trunks with chicken wire and strategizing at council meetings about their furry foes' fate.
At a meeting last month, City Councilor Kelly Swearingen asked how many trees must be wrapped before the city deals directly with the beavers.
"I think we need to do something," she said. "They need to go."
"It looks like a moonscape," noted Mayor Jay Arrowsmith DeCoux, describing a ravaged spot along the shore to his colleagues. "Those beavers have cut down everything."
Tersteeg, on a recent tour of the beavers' handiwork, pointed to several nibbled stumps left in the Grand Marais Recreation Area's campground.
One was a mature maple felled by beavers over the course of a couple weeks in November, he said. Another, teeth marks still fresh, was a mountain ash. Crafty beavers somehow split open its protective wire cage to get the wood.
This past fall, several campers reported hearing gnawing while they slept, Tersteeg said. A few even heard a tree crashing down.
Falling trees "are a bit of a liability," DeCoux said. "So we want to make sure we don't have a lot of that happening."
Beavers have become so brazen _ or maybe desperate for wood _ that one estimated at weighing 40 to 50 pounds was hit on the highway.
