Jellyfish Cupcakes Blog

The beaver was once a familiar sight in the Cades Cove area of the Great Smoky Mountains.  The demand for beaver hats at the beginning of the twentieth century once threatened many populations of beaver in the United States, including those in the Great Smoky Mountains. Now it seems that beavers are making a recovery in Cades Cove as they are migrating from an area of North Carolina where they were reintroduced into that ecosystem.

Beavers are recognized as the natural engineers in Cades Cove and other areas of the Smoky Mountain nature. The beaver in Cades Cove have been known to dam streams into good sized ponds, by cutting down trees with their sharp teeth. This is not done to be destructive but to construct their lodges. Often you may hear beaver in Cades Cove make a loud smacking noise with their tail on the waters surface. They will do this as a warning to the colony of danger. At that point the colony heads for the safety of the lodges or tunnels which are dug out in the stream bank.