First he fells a large number of trees by cutting around the butts
with his teeth; then he trims the branches into convenient lengths,
drags or rolls them to the nearest water, and floats them down to his
storehouse, where he sinks them in a loose pile on the bottom. Green
wood sinks easily, as a rule; if the beaver’s sticks have a tendency
to bob up to the surface, where they would be frozen into the ice, he
keeps them down by pressing one end into the mud. If he can use flowing
water for transportation, he always does so; but he will not hesitate
to tow his food-wood across a lake, if need be, or to dig a canal if
his poplars stand some distance back from the water. He works by night
for the most part, remaining hidden in one of his burrows by day. Any
dull or rainy afternoon may bring him out; and should the weather turn
severe, threatening to freeze his pond or canal before he is ready for
winter, he will work day and night without rest. There will be time for
sleeping when he has nothing else to do.
When the pile of food-wood grows to goodly size, and while younger
members of the family are nightly adding to it, the old beavers prepare
their winter lodge on the shore. Their first care, curiously enough,
is for a cellarway or tunnel, which leads from the middle of the lodge
ground down through the bank, and emerges at the bottom of the pond,
convenient to the food pile.
Around the upper or land end of this tunnel they build their house, a
solid structure from four to eight feet high, and six to twenty feet
in diameter. The height depends on the expected rise of water in the
spring, since one room at least must always be above high-water mark.
The size varies with the number of occupants, a little lodge for a pair
of beavers just starting housekeeping, and a big house for a large
family. The latter usually consists of an old pair, with some “kit”
beavers recently arrived in the wilderness, and half a dozen or more
yearlings and two-year-olds. The materials of the lodge are brush,
grass and mud, and the interior is arranged with a view to comfort and
security. For safety against enemies the beavers depend on thick walls;
for comfort two rooms are provided, a lower entrance hall and an upper
living room, with an inclined passage or stairway between.[2]
Just over the tunnel, perhaps a foot above the level of the ground,
is a small chamber which serves as the entrance hall and dining-room
of the lodge. Here the beavers shake the water from their hairy outer
coats when they emerge from the tunnel (the inner coat of fur is
always dry), and here they eat their meals. The hard-packed floor of
this hall invariably slants upward from the mouth of the tunnel, and
the evident purpose is to allow the water to drain away more easily.
From one end of the hall a stairway, just big enough for a single
beaver at a time, mounts through the middle of the lodge to the living
room above. Sometimes this central passage is the guiding part of the
building plan, the lodge being constructed around it; but quite as
often the material is piled in a solid mass, and hall and stairway are
then cut out from beneath, as a continuation of the tunnel from the
pond. Around the top of the stairway, just under where the roof is to
be, runs a circular bench or gallery, which is covered deep with dry
grass or shredded wood. This bench forms the floor of the living room;
on it each member of the family will have his separate nest, from which
he can slip into the central opening and down the stairway without
disturbing any other beaver.
The bench is then roofed over, making a circular room from four to
eight feet in diameter, with an arched ceiling just high enough to
enable a beaver to move around without bumping his head. A small
ventilator is left among the poles that project through the roof, and
the structure is covered to a thickness of two feet with grass, sods,
and rushes, all mixed with mud from the pond bottom. This last is the
beaver’s mortar, and the frost hardens it to his purpose.
Like most other buildings, whether of bird or beast or man, the
completed house receives a final “touch,” and a very suggestive
one; but whether Hamoosabik adds it consciously, with purpose of
concealment, who can say? When the lodge is finished so far as comfort
and safety are involved, the beaver throws over it a litter of
weatherbeaten sticks, making it appear like a pile of drift stuff cast
up by winds or high waters. With nights of sharp frost the lodge walls
harden, becoming finally so granite-like that no enemy can break in,
and the beaver himself cannot gnaw a way out. The only door left him
is the opening in the middle of his living room, which leads down the
stairway through hall and tunnel, and emerges under five or six feet of
water at the bottom of the pond.
While all this building is going on, the ice forms thicker and thicker,
and presently the beaver is locked in until waters are open once more,
and returning birds are filling the silent woods with melody. Meanwhile
he will spend the greater part of the time in his upper living room,
and for exercise will pass a few pleasant hours every day in swimming
about his pond with its roof of ice. Farther he cannot go, and even
here his journeys must be short; since there is no air under the ice,
he must return to his lodge or enter one of his refuge burrows every
time he wants to breathe. When hungry he slips down through the tunnel
to the food pile, takes a stick up to his hall, and there eats the bark
to the last scrap. Then he carries the peeled stick back to the pond,
where it is thrown aside with a growing multitude that have no more
interest for the beaver family; unless, perchance, they use the pond
another season. In that event the peeled sticks, no longer glistening
white, but sodden brown, may be used to repair the dam or disguise the
new lodge.
That the beaver wearies of his diet of water-soaked bark is evident
from the fact that he explores every inch of his pond for roots of
the yellow lily; from this also, that if you cut a hole in the ice
and push in a pole of fresh willow or “popple” or moosewood, he will
find it within the hour and carry it away. Should you hold the pole,
keeping very still and throwing a blanket over the air hole to exclude
the light, he will attempt to pull it out of your hand. And if you
stick one end deep in the mud, leaving the upper end frozen fast in
the ice, he will promptly cut it in two places, one just above the
bottom, the other just below the ice, and so carry the pole away to
his dining-room.
The only variation of this winter-existence comes when there is an
open spring-hole in the pond or a bit of swift water at the inlet. The
imprisoned beavers make glad use of such an opening, which they may
have to reach by a long swim under the ice. They come every day to play
in the free water or to sit erect beside it, sunning themselves by the
hour on pleasant days, combing their fine fur meanwhile, or coaxing a
snarl out of it, using for the latter purpose the peculiar split claw
which every beaver carries on one of his hind toes.
Such hermits are happy fellows, lucky above the majority of beavers,
who have no sunlit playground in winter; but they enjoy themselves
circumspectly, knowing the danger of being caught in the open. At the
slightest alarm, the faint click of snowshoes or a breath of your scent
drifting downwind, every beaver disappears under the ice, giving the
danger signal by slapping his broad tail on the water as he goes down;
and when you hear them again they will be creeping into the living room
of the lodge. Rap the roof sharply, after approaching on silent feet,
and you hear _plop! plop! plop!_ as the beavers drop into their tunnel
one after another. Go out on the ice now, and hammer it with your ax.
If your ears are keen, you may hear a faint rumble or gurgling of
water as some of the family return to their lodge, while others enter
refuge burrows in the bank. So they are driven back and forth; but
spare them any prolonged fright, for they are the most inoffensive
little prisoners in the wilderness.
* * * * *
Meanwhile Keeonekh the otter is a foot-loose creature, a rambler, an
_erdstappa_ or earth-hitter, as our forbears called one with a gift for
roaming. He has the whole wilderness for a hermitage; yet his world is
only as big as he makes it. Like most wild creatures, he has definite
limits beyond which he rarely passes, and then only when food fails in
his familiar district. The waters are sealed, to be sure; but every
large lake has an air hole or two, and swift streams offer plenty of
open places. When fishing for his dinner Keeonekh holds close to one
opening, coming out where he went in; but when on a journey he may
enter one air hole and emerge at another so far away that you cannot
see him. And this because he has learned the curious trick of breathing
under the ice, where another animal must quickly drown.
That trick is simple enough, but few besides Keeonekh have mastered
it. When he is far from an opening and must have fresh air, he presses
up against the under surface of the ice and slowly expels his breath,
which forms a great bubble around his nose. He leaves it there a
moment, till it is purified by contact with water on one side and
ice on the other; then he takes it back into his lungs and goes on
refreshed. He may reach an opening on the next tack, where you hear
him blow out his breath with a long _wheeeef_ of satisfaction; if
not, he rises against the ice once more and repeats his extraordinary
performance.
An otter travels widely in winter, following a definite circuit and
returning at fairly regular intervals. The circuit may be a dozen miles
in diameter, much wider than a deer’s, but not so wide as a wolf’s, and
he covers it by his own trails from lake to lake. These commonly follow
direct lines, reaching their objective by the easiest route; but if
there is a bit of open water on the way, Keeonekh must turn aside for
a splash in it; or if there is a steep hill or bank anywhere near, he
will climb up one side for the sake of sliding down the other. Even on
level ground he proceeds in merry fashion, taking two or three swift
jumps and throwing himself forward for a slide on his belly. Part of
his traveling seems to be done in mere enjoyment of change, of motion,
of seeing the country; another part is intended to keep him acquainted
with places where the best fish are wintering. With that difficult
matter he is enviably familiar; if ever you find where an otter fishes
regularly, you may confidently drop your minnow there.
Keeonekh is a dainty feeder, and uncommonly notional for a beast. He
will pass by a score of watery chub if he knows where to expect a fat
trout; he will ignore suckers for a white perch, or a coarse-fleshed
bass for a sweet eel. He will not touch any fish a second time, though
he may have left the greater part of it; and he will not look at a dead
fish or at bait or carrion of any kind. Only a fresh fish, a living
fish, appeals to him, and he may catch this by stealth or in whirlwind
fashion, according to circumstance or his mood of the moment.
Sometimes his approach is so shadowy, so arrow-like, that a somnolent
trout is gripped before he is aware that danger is near. Again, a fish
darts away in alarm, and Keeonekh follows with silent, powerful thrusts
of his webbed forefeet, swinging his body left or right by aid of his
muscular tail as a rudder. So he follows every turn of his prey, and
catches it at last by sheer skill and endurance. He is a wonderful
fisherman, only Hukweem the loon comparing with him in this respect;
and the loon is inferior in that he chases little fish, while Keeonekh
always picks a big one. When you find the remnant of his feeding, one
of your surprises may be this: you have fished the same lake or stream,
using your best skill and most delicate tackle; but the head and tail
which Keeonekh leaves behind him bespeak a better fish than ever you
saw caught here.
All that is simple enough in summer, when waters are open and flooded
with light; but when a blanket of ice covers the lake an otter must
be more alert, keener of eye and quicker of snap, if he is to keep in
good condition by what he catches. The fish are now in hidden places,
deep and inconvenient; they eat little or nothing, and they lie so
quiet in the underwater gloom that one must be very near to distinguish
them from other shadows. Then, when Keeonekh catches a fish under the
ice, he cannot breathe from an air bubble, as he does when he is free,
because the slippery thing in his mouth interferes with the delicate
performance. Neither can he dispose of his fish where he is, but must
get it quickly to the nearest air hole. Even there he cannot or will
not eat in the water, but invariably takes his catch out on the ice,
where he leaves record of his feeding in the shape of bones or scales
or, it may be, a pound or two of excellent fish, since he often catches
a bigger one than he can eat. When you find such signs, be sure there
is good angling nearby. An otter never carries a fish beyond the spot
where he lands it.
Keeonekh does most of his winter fishing in half-open streams, where
it is easy to bring his catch out on the bank, and where he has hidden
dining rooms under shelves of ice left by falling water. For lake
fishing he uses a spring-hole or the open mouth of a brook; and should
you see him enter such a place, you may confidently look for him to
come out again, unless he happened to see you first. If not alarmed,
he makes a swift circuit of the fishing grounds, and presently you see
his glistening head shoot up in the opening. The next instant he is
out on the ice, humping his back over his catch, and sometimes mewing
to himself in a pleased kind of way. If he finds nothing in his rapid
search, you may know it by his _wheeeef!_ as his head appears; for he
cannot whistle like that while his mouth is full. Then he will either
wait awhile by the opening and try again, or else hurry away to another
fishing ground.
If the lake be small and frozen solidly from shore to shore, Keeonekh
passes over it indifferently; it may hold many good fish, but there is
no way for him to enter and catch them. Should the ice have a single
opening, such as one often finds at the inlet of a lake, you may have a
puzzling question to answer when you see an otter go into it, and wait
hour after hour without seeing him come out again.
Once, when I first began to follow the winter trails, I saw an animal
swim rapidly across a pool of open water and disappear under the ice.
He was too far away to name him with certainty; but the electric
motion, the broad head without visible ears, the following bits of fur
with a handbreadth of water showing between back and tail,--all these
proclaimed an otter, because no other creature swims in just that
way. He had not seen me; I was luckily quiet when he passed, and the
breeze was in my favor. Very confidently I watched for him to reappear,
thinking I would take his fine skin back to camp. I knew the pond well;
it had no other opening, and the inlet was frozen for a mile or more
above the spring-hole. Of a surety, therefore, my game must show itself
again, since no animal can live for any length of time under the ice.
Ten minutes ran away, while I marveled at an otter’s power of holding
his breath. An hour passed, a time of increasing bewilderment, and no
life stirred in the black water, which glimmered like a pool of ink
in its setting of ice and snow. The afternoon went to join all other
wasted afternoons; I began to doubt what I had seen, until I crossed
the inlet and found Keeonekh’s trail under the shore, which made me
hide and watch once more. Evening came; owls hooted in the woods; a
storm wind began to moan, and still no otter. When it grew too dark to
see anything clearly I went home.
Two or three inches of snow fell that night. At daybreak I was back at
the inlet, and there were the fresh tracks of my otter,--leisurely,
exasperating tracks, which emerged from the spring-hole as if there
were no call to hurry, and headed down the pond on a journey of which I
never found the end. He had come out, just as I expected; but where had
he been?
Could you follow an otter in such a place, you might see him rout out a
fish, catch it after a breathless chase, and speed away to the nearest
place for eating it. That place may be a den of his own in the bank,
or a beaver’s tunnel under the lodge, or a cave under a hummock where
the expanding ice crowds up over a half-submerged rock, making a roomy
air-chamber in which otter, mink or muskrat may eat or rest in perfect
security. The rock offers them a floor, and the roof of ice hides them
from all prying eyes. It is in such places, I think, that Keeonekh
sometimes meets the beaver and makes an enemy of him.
* * * * *
The winter comedy, as one follows it in imagination, may be something
like this. Keeonekh enters a lake that the beavers are using for
winter quarters, and glides like a shadow over the fishing grounds. In
deep water beyond the inlet he jumps his game, and follows it hither
and yon through the gloom under the ice. The chase may take him far
from the opening; but for that he has no concern, feeling sure of
himself and of his locality. It is his business to know every den
and air hole in the lake, as it is a wolf’s business to know every
rabbit swamp and deer yard within forty miles, since his life may at
any moment depend on knowing just such things. Almost out of breath,
he grips his fish and heads swiftly for the nearest breathing place,
coming out above water in the beavers’ tunnel, and climbing instantly
into the lower room.
The beavers, hearing something in their tunnel, something that comes
with a rush, naturally scramble into their upper room to get away
from it. They are not looking for trouble; like all other wood folk,
they are keen to avoid it. After listening a moment, one big beaver
comes cautiously down the passage; but before he can get into his hall
Keeonekh has blocked the way.
Now an otter always eats where he lands his catch. He never carries a
burden on land; and should you surprise him with a fish, he drops it
and escapes, knowing that he can catch another. But he has no fear
of the beaver, and so humps his back to eat in Hamoosabik’s hall,
unmindful of angry muttering in the passageway above, or of beady eyes
that glare down on this mannerless barbarian who brings smelly fish
into a house that is very clean.
The smell is the worst feature of the outrage, I think, since it drowns
the odor of musk, in which beavers delight. They are curious creatures
in this respect; though they carry musk with them, and their lodge
is at all times filled with its aroma, they will yet go out of their
way for a fresh sniff of the delicacy. For most other odors they have
strong aversion. You can drive them from their lodge, for example,
or away from any dam they are building (a thing which must be done
sometimes, when they flood a trail you are using), by scattering the
contents of a carbide lamp or other strong-smelling stuff where they
must pass over it or get it on their feet.
Here then is a lively situation, Keeonekh eating fish not only in the
house, but under the very noses of beavers that cannot abide a fishy
smell. Nor can they stop the nuisance, however angry they may be. A
grown otter is a match for any single beaver; a downward rush of the
whole family is impossible, because there is room in the passage for
only one beaver at a time, and the passage is blocked by Keeonekh
with a chip on his shoulder. Like other beasts, he is in fighting mood
when his dinner is threatened. So he eats his fish where he lands it,
leaving slime, scales, fragments of skin or flesh, an abominable mess,
in the beavers’ hallway; and their first concern when he departs is to
be rid of what he leaves behind him. Throw it out they cannot, there
being no door or window to the lodge; their only way is to take the
offensive stuff in their teeth and carry it through the underwater
tunnel. One can imagine their emotions as they clean up the litter, and
what they would like to do to the wretch who left it.
Keeonekh is far away by the time the lodge is again shipshape, and the
beavers can never overtake him. He is faster at swimming than they are.
Should they follow as far as the opening by which he entered the lake,
there they must halt and turn back. They dare not venture afield in
winter, while otters travel boldly in the open at any season.
* * * * *
We have followed the little comedy imaginatively thus far, but not
without certain signs or hints that give our fancy the right direction.
One day, full twenty years after witnessing the beaver-otter fight,
Simmo and I stood beside a beaver lodge that the owners had abandoned
for their summer roving. The lake was a natural one, not an artificial
pond made by a beaver dam, and in the deeper water fish were still
fairly plentiful. The beavers had not yet driven them away. Peering
curiously into the still water under the bank on which the lodge stood,
I noticed some bones, gill covers and other fishy litter, which Simmo
thought was the refuse left by an otter. At first that seemed very
queer, since an otter always eats on land, and the refuse was scattered
on the bottom of the lake near an outlet of the beavers’ tunnel. When
we laid the lodge open to examine its interior arrangement, the Indian
pointed to some dried fish scales in crevices of the beavers’ hallway.
“Look,” he said. “Oh, by cosh, look! Dat cheeky hotter come in here
las’ winter, an’ eat-um fish in beaver’s house, right under hees nose.”
And that, if one were guessing at animal motives, may suggest a reason
why one beaver, at least, will have a grudge to settle when he meets a
certain otter in the open. As Simmo says, “By cosh, now, no wonder he
mad w’en he meet-um!”
[Illustration]
A NIGHT BEWITCHED
Silence is the rule of the woods at night, of all woods and all proper
nights, I think; but like other rules it has startling exceptions.
Hidden in the voluminous records of Alexander von Humboldt is a picture
of night in a tropical forest which stays in the memory like a bad
dream. As I recall the matter, after many years, the scientist was
awakened by a horrible uproar,--squeals, grunts of terror, a rumbling
snarl which broke into the roar of a charging beast. Then came a
violent crashing, as tapirs dashed away with a jaguar at their heels,
and instantly the forest became pandemonium. Parrots screeched, monkeys
gibbered and barked, a multitude of unnamed birds or beasts added each
his scream or howl to the jungle chorus of fear.
To read of such nocturnal alarm was, for a certain small boy, at least,
to dream and shiver over it afterward, as one dreamed in a cold sweat
of Hugo’s man, in _Toilers of the Sea_, who went down to a gloomy wreck
in which lurked a devilfish, and “just then he felt himself seized by
one foot.” I did not know, and no truthful person thought to tell me,
that the alleged savage jungle is in reality quite peaceful; that its
killing is more strictly limited by the need of food than that of a
modern packing house, or that women and children go nightly to sleep
amid its fancied horrors with a greater sense of security than we enjoy
behind bolted doors.
Humboldt’s description is undoubtedly true of some one night, or part
of a night; but it gives a wrong impression that such a night is
typical of the South American or any other forest. It errs also, and
grievously, in the assumption that nocturnal cries are indicative of
terror; for terror is an emotion which we carry with us into strange
woods at night, and which we are apt to read into any sound we hear,
even when the sound voices only anger or warning or animal excitement.
Of the tropics I have no personal experience; but I have questioned men
who have spent time enough in the jungle to become familiar with it,
and they agree that in the early part of the night the forest often
resounds to a thrilling outcry; and that this outcry, if one be not
himself frightened by it, has a defiant or exultant ring, as when dogs
voice challenge or applause at another dog’s barking. Then, as birds
settle to sleep and beasts take up their roaming, the jungle becomes
profoundly still, and remains so till the dawn, when full-fed brutes
begin to grunt or bark as they seek their coverts, and birds call
jubilantly from tree to tree as they welcome a new day.
That is certainly true of our northern forests, where a few wild
creatures lift their voices, joyously, it seems to me, in the evening
twilight, but where “the dead vast and middle of the night” passes in a
silence that is almost painful to human ears. Yet even the silent North
will sometimes be disturbed, and echoes that have long slept will rouse
up to answer a wild calling from lake or ridge or lonely beaver meadow.
Once in a while comes a night (in early autumn, as a rule, and at a
time of full moon) when birds and beasts are strangely restless, when
you meet them in unexpected places or hear them calling everywhere. No
explanation of the phenomenon occurs to me, though I have observed it
repeatedly, and have noticed that owls cry warning of it before sundown.