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Canadian Beaver — Part 2
Images coming soon.
All of which may only go to show that beavers, like other animals, vary in intelligence, and while some still fell their trees haphazard, others have learned something of the woodsman's craft of cutting. Judging from my own experience I should suppose that hardly one tree in ten would be likely to come to the ground if gnawed off carelessly without forethought, though I believe that trees growing near a stream do usually have a tendency to lean a little towards the water.
When the tree is down the beavers go to work trimming off the branches and cutting the trunk into suitable lengths to be dragged down to the water.
The dam is made of these short logs and trunks wattled together and filled in with stones and earth, the whole cunningly bent against the current to withstand the pressure of the water.
It is frequently reinforced by other dams just below, that back up the water against the first and relieve it of a part of the pressure.
As the water rises the beavers watch the shores carefully and every depression in the bank likely to lead the water off to one side is promptly dammed and the pond at last brought to the desired level.
During the summer they live an easy and care free life along the banks like muskrats, feeding on lily roots and bark and green twigs generally; but with the coming on of autumn their recreation ends and they go back to work once more, repairing the dam against the coming of the fall rains and erecting their winter cabin at the edge of the water. As before stated the cabin is very similar to that of the muskrat, being roughly built of sticks and brush, and finally plastered outside with sods just before the pond freezes over.
Knowing that long before the ice melts in the spring the natural food supply in the pond is likely to be exhausted, these prudent creatures lay in an ample supply of birch, poplar and cotton wood for the winter.
The trees, which at times are only to be found at considerable distances from the water, are felled and cut into convenient lengths and dragged down to the pond along paths cleared through the undergrowth for the purpose. At times the beavers even find it worth their while to dig channels in low swampy ground, and along these they float their wood out into the pond. It is stacked in a loose pile near the cabin, the ends of the sticks buried in the mud so that they may not be floated off when the water rises to fill the pond. After the pond is full and its surface frozen over in the winter, the beavers cut strips off the bark under the ice when other food falls short; But all winter long they are still hunting for fresh supplies, following the pond's winding margin beneath the ice and exploring the various inlets and little brooks that reach back into the woods, digging up roots from the bottom and gnawing the bark from bushes and trees surrounded by water when the pond is filled. And so the winter passes quietly with them, allowing them only an occasional obscure glimpse of the sun when the wind chances to sweep a portion of the clear ice above them free from snow.
I fancy that toward the end of winter they must get just a little impatient and watch eagerly for the first sign of open water at the edge of the ice; knowing that it is only a question of time before their whole pond shall be free once more, and they may splash and paddle in the shallow margin to their hearts' content with the spring sun warm on their backs, and their lungs filled with fresh living wind from the woods. As their family increases in size they enlarge their cabin each fall to accommodate the new members, or else construct new lodges along the shore, until, if undiscovered by the trapper, they have established a busy and contented little settlement, for they are a social folk and fond of one another's company, with the exception of certain ill-natured old bachelors who refuse to associate with the rest but live apart in burrows of their own digging.
Just as among the muskrats you will find a solitary individual here and there making its lone mud-hut at the head of any little meadow brook, and apparently avoiding the rest of its kind as much as possible; the chief difference being that these recluse muskrats are generally females--at least most of those that have come under my own observations have been; while among beavers the hermits are almost always old males as already stated.