MOUNTAIN BEAVER
Above the moist, ferny floor of a densely shaded mountain slope of
almost tropic richness, the cubs had noticed a squirrel barking in an
alder thicket.
As they approached to find out what he was barking at, their noses began
telling them that here was a whole colony of creatures they had never
smelled before. Soon they could see that the ground was a network of
their tiny trails, together with an occasional footprint that had been
left by the bobcat family.
Not a movement was made above ground, but their sharp ears could detect
scufflings and scrapings from underneath their feet. At the end of a
fallen log Chinook found a dump of earth where a hole large enough for a
woodchuck gave off that same strange scent. Merrily he started digging.
Well, he dug and he dug and he dug! He was digging the roof from a
branching tunnel, his nose telling him at every turn which way his prey
was retreating. But still he dug and he dug. Several times he heard a
tiny growling, and a snapping of angry teeth, but for half an hour he
dug as fast as he could without once catching up with the fleeing
rodent. But that only made the little bear the more determined.
Snookie, too, was digging, and he certainly didn’t mean to let her catch
one before he did. The tunnel dwellers smelled a bit like muskrats and a
bit like bunnies, but, had they only known it, they were mountain
beaver, a species like nothing else at all, but called beavers by the
Indians because of their soft fur. They look more like woodchucks than
anything else, because naturally all this digging had developed the most
powerful shoulder muscles.
Well, that whole oozy slope was fairly honeycombed with branching
tunnels, and though the two cubs dug till they were tired, and no end
covered with mud, the creatures kept escaping through their connecting
runways. Somehow, it never occurred to the little bears to lie in wait
at their exit holes as a bobcat might have done. They were too
impatient.
Then, two feet underground, Chinook came to a great round hole almost
large enough for him to have curled up in himself, and here indeed was a
feast for the pair of them; for though the anxious parents had long
since carried all the babies out of the nursery and dragged them to
safety by the backs of their necks, opening off the nursery chamber were
several clean, mud-plastered storerooms filled with fern roots, tender
twigs and juicy bits of bark. Snookie remembered that she had seen
several trees completely girdled by gnawing teeth. This, then, was the
reason why.
After they had fed their fill, for a small sample of such hearty fare
went a long way with them, the cubs gave up the chase and climbed into a
tree where they could take a nap. When they awoke, the moon had risen.
Down on the ground beneath, where before had been no sign of any living
thing, now scampered mountain beaver by the dozen. Some of them were
sitting up squirrel-like and eating, with a root or stalk held in their
handlike paws. Others were carrying great bundles of green stuff in
their jaws and dropping it beside their doorways, with stems all laid
neatly side by side, as if to dry it out before storing it. Still others
were rapidly rebuilding their depleted tunnels. But though the cubs
promptly came down and tried to have more fun, again they had the same
baffling experience. They caught not one mountain beaver.