Gary's off to prowl the rain forests of Panama. He'll meet you here for your usual morning cup of coffee together on Thursday. We'll print some of his columns from the past while he's gone. Today's is from Oct. 29, 1996.

Dear Gary:

We summer each year in the Delta, anchoring our sailboat on the Mokelumne River, then running shore lines fore and aft to trees on the bank.

This year we've seen beavers in the area and hear them splashing away early in the morning. Yesterday morning, around 6, my husband heard the beavers chomping away somewhere along the shore, fairly close to the boat. Later that morning, as I went out in the raft, I glanced over at the shore where we have the boat tied and saw the branch was gnawed all the way through, just held in place by the brush along the bank.

It was freshly gnawed, so we assume that was what we heard early in the morning. Another branch was also gnawed through, as though the beaver didn't get the right branch to start with. These branches were both about 6 inches in diameter, and we had seen no evidence of damage on them the day before.

We retied the shore line, ran a second line as a backup, up higher, and now hope the beavers don't figure it out.

They're smart when it comes to engineering, but do you think they thought we were disturbing them and were trying to get rid of us?

Shelley Dommer,

the Delta

Dear

Sounds like a scary new Stephen King novel:

The intelligent beavers chewed through the anchor rope in the middle of the night and quietly towed the sailboat full of sleeping humans deeper into the Delta swamp.

Seriously, beavers are great engineers, but I've never know them to have the smarts to use that talent to get rid of people who were bothering them. If that were the case, we'd have been losing people right and left for years along waterways all over the state.

I've cared for injured beavers and found that what you see is what you get: huge, powerful rodents that chew on everything. The branch where your boat was tied might have caught their attention because the pull of the boat bobbing in the water caused it to move. Salt from your sweaty palms when you tied up the boat may also have attracted them to that branch.

I don't know if this would work or not, but maybe if you spray dog repellent all over the branch you're using to tie up your boat, they'll ignore it. They have sensitive noses.

They also have this thing about pungent odors. To be on the safe side, spray the repellent on a branch down by the water. If the branch disappears in the night, forget my suggestion.

Keep us posted on how this works out. What a great way to spend the summer!

(This is my first e-mail message from a boat. An improvement over a bottle!)

A FELINE FABLE

Dee Merritt of Concord forwarded this story for your reading pleasure:

My aunt's neighbor in New York had a beautiful black cat, "Villiam," who spent his days outside and came indoors at night.

One cool October evening, he disappeared. The neighbor searched for him in vain. The following spring, however, Villiam reappeared, looking healthy and clean. She figured he'd been sowing wild oats.

Everything was back to normal, until that autumn, when Villiam disappeared again. The next spring, he returned. Perplexed, my aunt's friend began asking neighbors for clues. Finally she rang the bell of an older couple.

"A black cat?" the woman said? "Oh, yes. My husband and I hated to see him out in the cold, so we bought a cat carrier. We take him to Florida every winter."

Find more Gary in his blog at www.ibabuzz.com/garybogue or write Gary, P.O. Box 8099, Walnut Creek, CA 94596-8099; old columns at ContraCostaTimes.com, click on Columns; e-mail garybug@infionline.net.