Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, November 21, 1994                   TAG: 9411210094
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: C-4   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: DUMFRIES                                 LENGTH: Medium

BUSY BEAVERS GNAW TREES, CAUSE POWER OUTAGES

But the construction crews aren't to blame - at least not human workers.

Beavers are the builders bringing down trees on power lines near the River Woods development just north of Dumfries.

Since mid-October, the beavers have been gnawing on 60-foot sycamores and maples. Falling timber has made a messy spaghetti of wires and snapped fuses and even taken down a pole in the surrounding marshes.

``I just heard a big boom,'' said Larry Bjorgan, a maintenance engineer at the Woodmark Apartments next door. ``It's amazing what the little suckers can do.''

Residents have not been amused and neither have Virginia Power officials, who have spent about $2,000 on repairs in the area, according to company spokeswoman Karen Russell.

``I sat in the dark,'' said Christie Newell, 24, a waitress who spent nearly eight hours the night of Nov. 11 without electricity.

``My husband and I went to the Shoney's for five hours,'' said Corrina Ross, 22, a travel agent. She lives nearby with her husband, Jason, a corporal at the Quantico Marine Base. ``If they do it again, my husband said, we're moving,'' she said.

Power disruptions even delayed a football game last week at nearby Potomac High School.

Virginia's beaver population is growing, wildlife specialists said. No one wants beaver coats anymore, and the animals have few remaining natural predators.

Meanwhile, builders are encroaching on the wooded streams where the animals make their homes. For instance, River Woods, a garden apartment complex for young families, was finished last summer.

``They probably put this right up in the middle of their homes,'' Newell said sympathetically.

To Douglas Norman, who heads the Prince William County Animal Shelter, beaver problems come with the territory in Virginia's outer suburbs.

The web-footed animals, which can weigh more than 100 pounds, rank right up with deer when it comes to complaints. They dine on expensive ornamental trees, gnaw through office park landscaping, flatten corn crops and flood low-lying areas with their industrious dam-building, Norman said. But he added, ``Hey, that's what they do for a living.''

In an effort to keep the power on, contractors have cleared trees and limbs from the gully behind River Woods, which abuts Powell's Creek off U.S.1. They also have dislodged part of a beaver dam and wrapped aluminum foil around the bases of remaining trees to head off further problems.