Displacing Nature

Over the decades that the urban forested
ravine, a prized natural landscape
whose geology ensures that no building
will take place there though existing
within a municipal environment of 
nearby housing tracts, a succession of 
beaver colonies has arisen, each one
dismantled, the beaver carried off to
areas where disgruntled citizens will not
complain of their presence. Latterly
the beaver have returned, built their
dams, one here, another there, and 
have been busy stocking their lodges
with a pantry-full of winter forage, in
the process harvesting poplars like
there's no tomorrow, a species of tree
expendable, serving a good purpose as
far as the beavers are concerned. Each
day in succession more poplars, striplings
and mature alike, fall to their razor-sharp
teeth, the falls unerringly in the direction
of the waterway coursing through the
forested ravine. Evidence of their
industrious predation is seen in the
ubiquity of the glaring white stumps of 
the heartwood in its cone-shaped death
agonies, splintering to the forest floor
awaiting dismemberment and usefulness.
Complaints abound among those clearly
resentful of nature's blueprint for survival
while among those appreciative of the very
presence of these creatures so close to
the unnatural world of civilization argue
for their preservation, the very symbol of
industry. Guess in which camp lie the teen
offspring whose favourite pasttime is to
destroy living nature wherever they encounter 
it, snapping immature branches, pulling down 
saplings, setting fires with the assembly of 
tinder-dry woody detritus? Yet for the area 
beaver there may be no tomorrow.