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Hey everyone, it's Tom Driesbach sitting in the host chair today.

And a few months ago, my siblings and I got a text message.

It was kind of out of the blue in the way only a message from your parents can be.

It was just a picture of my dad and he was standing in the snow near my family's house

next to a big tree.

And close to the bottom of the tree,

it looks like someone or something

had taken a huge bite out of it,

like if the tree were an apple. it almost looks like you could push it really hard and it would fall over. It will, right?

It sucks that you really don't want to go check it out too closely.

That's my mom, Michelle, and my dad Craig.

And they sent me and my siblings this picture because the thing or things that took

this massive bite out of the tree have become a little bit of an obsession.

My parents are in a long-running feud with a group of wild beavers.

To set the scene, I grew up in rural Vermont on a dirt road off of another dirt road which connects to another dirt road.

My parents driveway is almost a mile long and at the bottom is this leech infested pond.

Yeah, I remember growing up that is the pond that you did not want to

swim in. It was just kind of gross. Well it got grosser. Hard to imagine.

So last summer my parents are driving by and realize, wow, the water level is really getting high.

...