A Toothless Beaver

An 11 year-old + a sharp hatchet + unattentive parents + some aspen trees = $450 fine.

An alert camper knocked on the door and told me that he and his son encountered a boy chopping down aspen trees like a beaver getting ready for the winter on the edge of a meadow in our campground. I immediately jumped in the trusty, but slow Gator for a trip up the mountain to investigate.

Of course, when I asked the parents occupying a site near the meadow about someone chopping down trees they didn't have a clue. Then, after a few more questions, they finally asked their 11 year-old son. He led me to the trees he had felled not more than 100 feet from his parent's campsite. I called the sheriff. It is a crime to chop down trees, alive or dead, in a national forest.

Unfortunately for the parents, our local NF law enforcement officer heard the dispatch and came racing up the canyon in his cruiser with sirens going. He pulled in to the campsite and the sheriff turned the investigation over to him. It took him a very short time to get his pad out and write the parents a $450 ticket for the trees. The parents watched the boy chop down the trees and then told the officer the child did not know it was against the law, that they were not informed that they could not cut down trees, and said that the boy was a boy scout. Very, very, very lame.

And a toothless beaver could have done a better job of felling those aspens.