OLD SHAG
Eight years have now passed since Shaggycoat brought his mate into the
beautiful wilderness valley, and they had proceeded to make it
habitable, according to the ideas of a beaver.
Wonderful changes have taken place in the alder meadow since then, and
one would not know it to be the same spot. It is no more an alder
meadow, but a beautiful forest lake stretching away into the distance
until it is lost between the foothills, nearly two miles above the dam.
On either side, the sparkling waters flow back to the amphitheatre of
hills that enfold it and the lake is altogether like a wonderful
sparkling jewel set in the emerald surrounding of the foothills.
Each summer, during his wanderings, Shaggycoat has met other wanderers
like himself, and many of them have returned with him to his mountain
lake. Even the first autumn, when he returned with his amputated paw, a
pair of sleek beavers came with him, so there were two beaver lodges in
the pond during the second winter instead of one. The dam was also
strengthened and broadened during that second autumn until the pond was
twice its original size.
The third spring Shaggycoat's own first family of beavers left the lodge
to roam during the summer months, and to return in the autumn with
mates. This is the arrangement in a well ordered beaver lodge. The
children stay with their parents until they are three years of age, so a
lodge usually contains the babies, the yearlings and two-year-olds, who
allow themselves shelter under the family lodge until their third
birthday, when they are shoved out to make room for the babies who have
just come. So there is a general nose breaking at this time, and the
elders are sent into the world while all the rest are promoted. But I do
not imagine that they have to be shoved very hard, for their love of
freedom and wild life, and also the mating instinct, is calling to them
that third year, and they always obey the call of nature.
It must not be imagined that the little dam originally built on the
spot, flows all this broad expanse of country, for, as we have already
seen, year by year it has been added to, until now the gorge is blocked
by a log and stone structure that would do credit to man, with all his
building and engineering skill. It seems to me that the beaver, with his
building instinct, and his ingenuity in making his world over to suit
his manner of life, more nearly resembles man than any other wild
creature.
Each beaver colony is a veritable city, and each lodge contains a large
and well ordered family.
The house is always scrupulously clean, and each member of the family
has his own bed which he occupies. The front gate is surrounded by a
moat, like the castles of old, and the drawbridge is always up.
The beaver is a veritable Venitian, and his city is a real Venice, with
its waterway and its islands of solid earth upon which stand the houses
of its many citizens. The new dam which is most important to Beaver
City, for it holds the water above the entrances of the score or more of
houses, is a fine structure about two hundred feet in length, and nine
feet in diameter at its base. Into the structure many thousand logs have
been rolled, some of them coming from two or three miles up the lake,
for timber is not so plentiful near to the dam as it was.
The engineering genius of this huge undertaking was Shaggycoat, who sat
upon his broad flat tail and directed his many workmen. Near by, seated
upon the top of one of the lodges, a sentinel was always posted while
they worked. He warned them of danger, and they gave their whole
attention to the work. At the first suspicious sound he would bring his
broad tail down upon the water with a resounding slap that could be
heard all along the dam, and all through Beaver City, for water is very
mobile, and conducts motion or sound easily. At this well-known signal,
the workers who, a moment before, might have been lifting and tugging
logs or laying on mortar, would disappear as though the lake had opened
and swallowed them. This was really just what happened, but the waters
did not open; they were always waiting and ready to receive their little
water folks.
For a few moments the lake would be as quiet as though there were not a
beaver in the whole shimmering expanse, then a brown muzzle, dripping
water, would be cautiously thrust up from some shady corner of the dam,
and a careful reconnaissance made. When the beaver had made sure that it
was a false alarm, he would call the rest and work would go on as
before.
Most of the conical shaped houses, of which there are now about twenty,
are on islands or on the bank near the dam. They look as much like a
small Indian village, as they do like the abodes of wild animals.
For a long time, the overflow water from the lake troubled the beavers
by wearing away their dam, but, finally, they dug a little channel in
the sand around one end of the dam, and now the water runs off nicely in
this artificial duct, and the dam is left unimpaired by the flow. If you
could stand upon this dam, partly overgrown by willows, and see the
symmetrical structure and the little lodges of Beaver City above, and
the sparkling water running nicely away in the sluiceway, you would
marvel at the ingenuity and patience of these ingenious rodents. But the
wisest and oldest head in the colony is that of Shaggycoat, or old Shag,
as I shall now call him, for he was the pioneer of the city, and his was
the first lodge on the large island.
Little by little he has seen his lake widen and broaden, and one by one
new lodges have been reared, until now, as he sits upon his broad tail
and views Beaver City from the vantage ground of the dam, he must be
well satisfied with his planning, for it is all his world and he loves
it as each wild creature does the element it inhabits. To his ears the
sound of running water is sweetest music, and the roar of the freshet,
which fills man with dismay has no terrors for him; he knows it is only
his beloved water world, wild and turbulent, with the joy of melting
snow, and the bliss of spring rains.
He also knows that soon the buds will start and the birds sing, and he
will be off for his summer ramble. He has never outgrown the habit of
wandering during the summer months, but autumn will surely see him back
directing repairs upon the dam and seeing that the winter supply of
unpeeled logs is stored. It takes a great many logs to supply Beaver
City with food now so that when the winter supply is piled up in the
water in front of the dam, it would probably make several cords. If you
could have seen the everchanging beauty of that forest lake through
spring, summer, autumn and winter, you would not have been surprised
that the beavers were well satisfied with their surroundings, or that
the water seemed always to be calling to them in low sweet tones.
When the spring freshet filled their lake to overflowing, the ice piled
up against the dam, and the mad waters rushed through the crevasse
roaring and hissing like an infuriated monster. Though the waters were
angry and tossed the great cakes of ice about disdainfully, yet the foam
upon its fretful surface looked soft as wool and the little water folks
knew that the anger would pass, even as the fury of the spring wind.
Finally the water would go down, and the lake would become clear and
calm. Then it was a wonderful opal like the spring sky from which it
took its color. When the warm spring winds kissed its sparkling surface,
it dimpled and sparkled, and little wavelets lapped the pebbly beach
with a low soft sound.
Then June came with its lily pads, and the pickerel grass in the
shallows along the edge, and the waters near shore were green like
emerald. July brought the lilies, whose mysterious sweetness ravished
the nostrils, and whose creamy white faces nestled among the green pads
in sweet content.
The summer passed like a wonderful dream with soft skies, balmy winds,
and warm delightful waters in which to swim, but the male beavers over
three years of age were always away during the summer, and the lake was
left to the females and the youngsters.
Soon autumn came and the maples back in the foothills were made gorgeous
by the first frost. The merry fall winds soon rattled down showers of
scarlet, crimson, yellow and golden leaves till the waters along the
edge of the lake were as bright as the branches above. Even then the
trees were all reflected in the lake, so it had its own beauty as well
as that of the world above it.
When the first frost came, the male beavers returned to repair the dam,
and build new lodges or repair the old ones. These were active nights
when the sky was so thick with stars that there was hardly room for
more, and the Milky Way was bright and luminous.
When the clear glass window was shut down over the lake and the beavers
in their snug city were made prisoners for the winter, December had
come.
Then the whole lake sparkled like a jewel, and by night it vied with the
stars for mysterious beauty; but soon the lake would be covered with
snow, and then it would be a wonderful marble floor, smooth as a board
stretching away as far as the eye could reach.
There snugly locked under the ice, where not even the gluttonous
wolverine can dig them out, with plenty of food for the coming winter,
let us leave the inhabitants of Beaver City, happy in the assurance that
spring will come again when their lake will be warm and bright, nestling
like a wonderful jewel on the breast of mother earth.
* * * * *
_BOOKS BY_ CLARENCE HAWKES
_Animal Biographies_
BLACK BRUIN. The Biography of a Bear.
KING OF THE FLYING SLEDGE. The Biography of a Reindeer.
KING OF THE THUNDERING HERD. The Biography of an American Bison.
PIEBALD, KING OF BRONCOS. The Biography of a Wild Horse.
SHAGGYCOAT. The Biography of a Beaver.
SHOVELHORNS. The Biography of a Moose.
TENANTS OF THE TREES.
TRAILS TO WOODS AND WATERS.
THE WAY OF THE WILD.
A WILDERNESS DOG. The Biography of a Gray Wolf.
* * * * *
WANTED A MOTHER. A Story for Children.