A tangerine-colored sun, the immense first fruit of early morning, slid up from behind the dark forested tree line of the lake&#x92;s far shore.</p><p>This was the one sweet hour of a day that promised to be sweltering.</p><p> No breeze stirred the leaves. Not a note of birdsong could be heard. It was as if all the natural world had drawn and held one last deep breath, preparing for the suffocating ordeal to come.</p><p> So complete was the stillness that the <em>plop</em> of a single fish rising seemed almost a commotion.</p><p>Sadly, the lake itself was greatly diminished &#x97; looking more like a construction site than a thing of beauty.</p><p> At the time of the basin&#x92;s creation, a small island had been left, connected to the shore by a handsome arched bridge, reminiscent of the one at Claude Monet&#x92;s Giverny lily pond.</p><p> Last winter or spring, however, a trespasser &#x97; it turned out to be a 60-pound boar beaver &#x97; dug a network of tunnels under the island, and undercut one of the bridge&#x92;s cement footings, causing the structure to tip perilously and making it unusable.</p><p> In order to right the bridge and repair the damage, it was necessary to open the release valve and draw down the water level by six feet or more, so that heavy machinery could get in to tackle the job.</p><p> That was at the start of this dry and uncommonly ferocious summer. People in that country neighborhood can scarcely remember the last good rain, and evaporation has lowered the lake even more.</p><p> In the shallower coves, great areas of the bed are exposed. Even in the main arm, the shoreline has receded by 10 feet or more. At full pool, the depth at the dam was some 35 feet, so in that area there still is well over 20 feet of water remaining &#x96; enough to sustain the fish population even in an overheated season.</p><p>If the autumn rains come in their usual abundance, the beauty of Lake Katie, as my angling friends and I call it, will be fully restored. And by the spring fishing season, this crisis will be behind us, though by no means forgotten.</p><p>Seven or eight years ago, some colonizing beavers found their way from the Osage River up tributaries of diminishing size until they found my lake, built a lodge and set about cutting trees around the shore. Fifty-seven mature oaks and hickories were felled before we even knew the rascals had arrived.</p><p> In self-defense, we rid the property of those pests &#x97; do not ask <em>how</em> &#x97; and thought the problem was solved. But as the work of this hefty marauder would later testify, we were wrong.</p><p> Understand, I have nothing against beavers in the abstract. In fact, I was so charmed by seeing a pair of them constructing a dam of brush and mud on a nameless little creek on a part of the farm far from the lake that, when a neighbor asked if he might trap them for their pelts, I told him no.</p><p> But that was before the bridge-wrecker did his mischief. Now it is war.</p><p> Never again will some furred brute be permitted to go about his evil work unnoticed and unchallenged. Henceforth I intend to be a model of vigilance.</p><p>Beavers are the world&#x92;s second-largest rodents, after only South American capybaras. I&#x92;ll grant them that distinction, and I have no objection to their inhabiting rivers, sloughs or other people&#x92;s ponds. </p><p> But the one in my lake erred strategically. He took his assault one bridge too far.