difference between the two views is the difference between strangeness
and familiarity, between guessing and knowing. This is an attempt to
look forth from a beaver’s house and see the world as a beaver sees it.
When you stand for the first time beside a beaver lodge you front a
disappointment, then a doubt, finally a battery of questions. You are
gliding down a wilderness stream, your senses joyously alert, in your
heart a curious feeling that you are an intruder, when your eye catches
a thing which is neither alive nor quite natural. It is a mass of
sticks, gray, like all jetsam of the shore; but it stands in a circle
of cut glass overlooking a bend where the stream broadens into a little
pond. Quietly the canoe turns in, touching the bank as noiselessly as
a floating leaf. As you step ashore, an odor of musk tells you that you
are at last in beaver land.
All around you is beauty, quietude, immensity; upon you is the spell
of the silent places. The wild meadow with its blossoming grass, over
which the wind runs in waves of light and shadow; the big woods,
which seem always to be listening; the everlasting hills with their
sentinel pines,--all these remind you of a day when God looked upon a
new creation, “and behold, it was very good.” Even the graceful canoe,
which has borne you silently through a vast silence, seems part of
a harmonious landscape. But that crude heap yonder, surely that is
not the famous dwelling you have read about and longed to see! One
look at the formless thing is enough to dispel all your illusions of
beaver intelligence. You expected something rare, an abode finely or
wonderfully wrought; you see a pile of sticks, big and scraggly, as if
a huge hawk’s nest had tumbled out of a tree and landed upside down.
Such is your first impression of a beaver’s winter house, making you
doubt whether the maker of such a poor abode has any more brains in his
head than a delving woodchuck. But when you push the sticks aside and
find that they conceal a careful work beneath; when you reflect that
the beaver gave a cunning last touch to his handiwork in order to make
it look like drift stuff cast up by the waters; when you slowly uncover
dam, transportation canal, emergency burrows, storehouse, and other
works of which this rude house was once the hopeful center,--then your
illusions come back multiplied, and you ask questions of a different
kind, no longer scornful, but truth-seeking. Your first view discloses
only a formless heap of sticks, because you view it from without as
a stranger; your last view, as you turn away regretfully, brings
sympathetic understanding of the brave little pioneer who looks out
from the sticks as from a familiar home, and is well content with what
he sees because he has proved himself master of circumstance.
The first of your new questions deals with the height of the lodge,
which is its most variable feature. One beaver builds a high lodge,
another a low; or the same beaver may erect a six-foot house one
season, and the next be content with a dwelling that will hardly be
noticeable when the snow covers it. In your thought this varying height
is associated with a strange weather prediction; for as in childhood
you were told that a low or high muskrat’s house was sure sign of a
mild or severe winter, so when you visit beaver land you shall hear
that this relative of the muskrat is an unerring weather prophet.
“When the beaver builds high and solid, look for deep snow and intense
cold” runs the saying, and your proper state of mind is one of wonder
at the mysterious instinct which enables the animal to know what kind
of winter he is facing, and to build his house accordingly.
Now the beaver, like other wild creatures, is an excellent weather
prophet. When you find him working leisurely by night, and sleeping
from early dawn till the stars come out, you may confidently expect a
continuation of Indian-summer weather; but when you find him rushing
his work by day-and-night labor, it is time for you to head out of
the woods (if you travel by canoe) before a freeze-up blocks all the
waterways. From these and other signs, which woodsmen point out, one
might judge that the beaver knows what kind of weather to expect
for the next day or two; but there his foreknowledge stops, being
sufficient for his needs. The weather of next winter cannot possibly
concern him when he builds his house; the height or solidity of his
walls is not determined by fear of cold or anticipation of a heavy
snowfall. What should he care for cold who has the warmest of furs on
his back, or for snow who has a weather-proof roof over his head?
No, the problem which a beaver faces is the single problem of rising
or falling water. Therefore the height of his dwelling will never be
determined by season, but always by locality. If he selects one place
for a winter habitation, he will build a high lodge; if he decides
that another place is better, he will be satisfied with a low lodge.
In either place his house, whether high or low, will prove to be just
the right height nine times out of ten, and perhaps oftener. Indians
assert that a beaver never repeats a mistake. They seem to think of him
as they think of themselves when they say, “If you fool-um Injun once,
that’s your fault. If you fool-um twice, that’s Injun’s fault.”
To understand the problem as Hamoosabik faces it every autumn, we must
remember that the lodge is to be his home during the winter, until
streams are clear of ice and he can once more seek his food along
the banks. He builds by choice on low ground, beside a quiet stream,
because he finds there alders for building material, abundant mud for
mortar, soft banks for refuge burrows, and broad levels through which
to run his transportation canals. Such places are overflowed in the
spring, some more, some less; and it is this varying overflow which
the beaver anticipates by the height of his dwelling, as he provides
against wolves or lynxes by thick walls that cannot be broken.
Near the top of the lodge is the living room, from which a tunnel
leads down through lodge and bank to a store of food-wood under the
ice. Since the water in this tunnel rises or falls with the level of
the pond, it follows that the living room must be high enough to give
assurance that the water will not enter and drown the beaver against
his own roof. Once his living room is flooded, he must escape through
the tunnel, find an opening in the ice of his pond, and take his chance
with hungry enemies in the snow-filled woods. A beaver does that once
in a lifetime, perhaps, when he builds a low lodge in a place which
calls for a high one; but he will not do it a second time, or a first,
if instinct can anticipate or industry prevent it.
We begin to understand now what is in the animal’s head while he speeds
his work during the beautiful Indian-summer days, when a soft haze
rests like a dream on the hills, and waters grow still as if to hold
the reflection of tranquil skies, of russet meadows, of woods agleam
with crimson and gold. He must abide here in a narrow room when all
this beauty and tenderness have passed into the cold gray or gleaming
white of winter; that the time is short he hears from the trumpets
of wild geese wending southward over his head. Food for his growing
family, a pond to store it in, a canal for transportation, a number of
safety burrows,--all these must be provided not in haphazard fashion,
but carefully and in order. If his food-wood be stored too early, it
will hold enough sap to cause the bark to sour under water, which
means calamity; or if it be gathered too late, a frost may close the
canal through which it must be towed to the storehouse. Not till these
preliminary works are finished does Hamoosabik rear his winter lodge,
with its living room wherein his family may gather in comfort by day or
sleep without fear at night, while trees crack under the intense cold,
and the howl of a hungry wolf goes searching through the woods.
While beavers are building their lodge, the water in all wilderness
streams is low, as a rule, for it is the end of the summer season; but
before spring comes the water will be high, and much higher in some
places than in others. The important matter, therefore, is to plan a
house suitable for the locality in which it stands; high enough, that
is, to prevent rising water from flooding the living room, but not a
handbreadth higher than the place demands for security. An overhigh
house is too noticeable, too glaring; and Hamoosabik is like other wood
folk in that he strives to be inconspicuous. The last thing any bird or
beast cares to do is to draw attention to the place where he lives;
that is as true of eagle or bear as of hummingbird or chipmunk.
Weighing these matters as we stand beside a beaver lodge, our question
returns in another form. It is no longer a question of foretelling
winter weather, but of anticipating early-spring conditions of land and
water, and it reads, By what strange instinct does the beaver build
now high, now low, and always just high enough to keep his living
room above the crest of the coming floods? That is the rule in beaver
land, with enough exceptions in the way of drowned lodges and homeless
beavers to make it an interesting rule, not a mere “dead” certainty.
The answer is, probably, that instinct has nothing to do with the
matter; so we may as well put that prejudice out of our heads and open
our eyes. Instincts are fairly constant, so far as we know them, while
floods and lodges are endlessly variable. The height of a beaver’s
lodge is largely the result of observation, I think, and of very
simple observation. It is noticeable that, when lodges are built by
different beaver families on the lower part of a stream, they are all
comparatively high; but when they appear on the head-waters of the same
stream, they are uniformly low. This because the spring rise of water
at the mouth of a brook is commonly much greater than at its source.
Take your stand now at either place, and look keenly about. See those
frayed alders; see that level line of gray spots where living trees
have been barked by floating logs; see that other line of jetsam on
the shore. Here, plain as your nose, are the high-water marks of this
particular locality. Every spring these marks are renewed, and the
highest is ever the most conspicuous. If you can see such signs, so
also can a beaver, who has excellent eyes, and who is accustomed to
use them in the darkness as well as in the light. That he does see
them and is guided by them is suggested by the fact that Hamoosabik’s
lodge, wherever you find it, has a dome which rises just above the
high-water mark of the surrounding country. Again and again I have
laid a straight stick as a level on top of a beaver house, turning it
in different directions and sighting along it; and almost invariably,
in one direction or another, I found my glance passing just above some
striking line of barked trees or drift stuff which showed where the
floods had reached their height.
A beaver does not use an artificial level, to be sure; but it is
doubtless as easy for him as for anyone else to know, when he sits
on a hummock, whether he is above or below the level of a plain mark
confronting him. Such is the probability, since all creatures have
subconscious powers of coördination. The probability increases when
you observe the beaver at his building operations.
One evening, just after sundown, I had the luck to watch a family of
beavers at work on their winter lodge. The place was solitary; the
animals had long been undisturbed, and they were hurrying the last part
of their work by day as well as by night, as they do in lonely regions.
As they are very shy in the light (at night they will come within
reach of your paddle, if you sit motionless in your canoe), I dared
not approach near enough to follow the details of their work; but this
much I saw plainly, that while four or five animals were industriously
gathering material and piling it up, one large beaver sat almost
constantly on top of the lodge. Occasionally he moved as if to receive
a troublesome stick or place it properly; but for the most part he
seemed to be doing nothing. Even when it became too dark to distinguish
more than moving shadows, the silhouette of that quiet beaver stood out
like a watchman against the twilight.
Simmo and Tomah both tell me that such a scene is typical of beaver
families at work, and that the quiet animal I had noticed, far from
doing nothing, was directing the whole job. These Indians can tell at
a glance whether a dam was built by young or old beavers; and they say
that, if the older members of a family are trapped or killed, the
young make blundering attempt at providing winter quarters. If the
family is undisturbed (a beaver family is made up, commonly, of three
generations), one of the parent animals takes his place on top of any
dam or lodge they are building, in order to direct the work and bring
it to the right level. At the same time he acts as a watchman, his
elevated position giving him advantage over the working beavers, which
have the habit every few minutes of dropping whatever they may be doing
and sitting up on their tails for a look all around.
It is very likely, therefore, that Hamoosabik does not follow a “blind”
instinct when he can use his seeing eyes. While his lodge is rising he
looks forth from the top of it, seeking familiar signs to guide him,
and he keeps on looking as well as building until he knows that he is
above the high-water mark of the neighborhood. And then, having reared
his walls to clear the flood level, he lays the floor of his upper room
and puts on the roof. If waters are normal, he will have a dry nest
as long as he cares to use it; but if deep snows are followed by an
unprecedented rise of water, he will probably be drowned out.
[Illustration: “_The silhouette of that quiet beaver stood out like a
watchman against the evening twilight._”]
Such observation seems remarkable in a mere beast; but what shall
we say of the beaver’s dam, of his transportation canal, of his
channels scooped out of the bottom of a shallow pond, and of other
works that deal intelligently with land or water levels? All these seem
to call for eyes as well as instinct; and it is no more remarkable that
a beaver should know, sitting on top of his lodge, that he is above or
below a visible mark than that he should run a winding canal half a
mile, as he often does, and keep the water level right at every point.
Even the simplest of the beaver’s works, his felling of trees, seems
to indicate a measure of observation. When he cuts a leaning tree he
always gnaws first and deepest on the leaning side, to which the tree
will fall. But if the tree is straight up and down, like a clever cat’s
tail, he cannot judge its inclination, and often makes a mistake,
throwing the tree to the wrong side or “lodging” it against another
tree, as the best woodsman may do now and then. When a beaver tackles
such a doubtful tree, he gnaws evenly around the whole butt, sinking
the cut deepest in the middle, shaping it like an hourglass. As he
works, he often stops cutting to look aloft, raising himself with
forepaws against the trunk or sitting erect at a little distance,
studying the tree with unblinking eyes as if to learn for his own
safety which way it intends to go. One who has ever seen an old beaver
thus sitting up on his tail, apparently to get the slant of a towering
poplar before he fells it, has no difficulty in accepting the notion
that the same beaver will recognize high-water mark when it lies
directly under his nose.
At times Hamoosabik must be sadly puzzled by his primitive observation,
especially where man interferes with nature, leaving strange marks
to which animals are not accustomed. Twice have I found surprising
lodges built on the shore of artificial ponds, where a new high-water
mark showed above the old flood level. These ponds had been made by
lumbermen, who raised the water five or six feet in order to have a
“head” for driving their logs. When their work ended they opened the
gates of their dam and went away, leaving the pond to return to its
former size. Then beavers came back to the solitude, and used the pond
for a winter home. When they examined the shores before building their
lodge (it is their habit to explore a place thoroughly), they must have
seen the dead trees, the barked trees, the line of jetsam high and dry,
all plainly indicating where the flood had been. But there was nothing
to tell the beavers why the water had risen so much higher here than
in other lakes, and they were evidently guided by such signs as they
could understand. In each case they built their lodge not on low swampy
ground, as they habitually do, but on a dry bank, and the dome of the
lodge rose just above the artificial water level.
* * * * *
Another question meets you when you examine Hamoosabik’s digging
operations, especially his canals, which are the most intelligent
of all his works. It is noticeable that beavers cut their food-wood
above their storehouse whenever that is possible, and so make use of
the current in transportation; but when the selected grove of poplars
stands back from the shore, then the beavers dig a canal from their
pond or stream to their source of supply. And a very remarkable canal
it is, with clean-cut sides, about two feet wide and a little less in
depth, in which the water stands quiet, showing a perfect level.
Such a canal goes straight as a string in one place, or winds around
an obstruction in another, always following the most even ground; and
it ends at the beaver’s grove, or as near as he can get and bring the
water with him. He is a powerful worker, handling logs of astonishing
size with the help of his mate; but you will not catch him rolling or
dragging a thing if he can possibly float it. Even the stones which he
uses in weighting his dam are moved under water, where they are much
lighter than on land.
It is commonly assumed that Hamoosabik digs a canal in order to have
an easy way of transporting his wood. He certainly uses it for that
purpose; but he has another end in view, I think, when he begins his
digging. It should be remembered that beavers, though tireless workers,
like to loaf and play as well as other wood folk. They never work for
the sake of working; yet one often sees a canal that represents an
enormous amount of labor, so apparently superfluous that one wonders
what the animals were thinking of. It is not merely the length of such
a canal which puzzles one, but the roundabout course it must follow in
order to keep on level ground. It sometimes happens, when food-wood
stands on a hillock within a few rods of the pond, that the beavers
will run their canal four or five times that distance, avoiding the
rising ground and approaching the hill from the farther side. Your
first thought, when you meet such a work, is that the animals could
have hauled their wood down the easy slope in half the time they spent
preparing for water transportation.
I recall one canal on which a deal of labor, the most skillful I ever
saw in an animal, had been expended for what seemed a very small
result. The beavers were building a dam on a trout stream bordered
by primeval forest. About two hundred yards west of the stream the
forest opened upon a little swale, in which grew plentiful alders, the
beavers’ favorite building material. Evidently they found the alders
when they explored the neighborhood, and decided they must have them.
Their dam was a small one, and it would have been a simple matter to
drag a sufficient supply of brush through the woods; but the beavers
chose the harder task of digging a six-hundred-foot canal from the
stream to the alder swale.
That canal was an amazing piece of work. Not ten yards of it were
straight, and could not be straight because of trees or other
obstacles; yet it held a course true as a compass from the pool above
the dam to the objective point, which was hidden from sight in the
big woods. In one place it ran under an immense tree that stood on a
hummock. The central roots were cut away; but other great roots were
left arching down on either side, supporting the tree as a living
bridge. In another place a pine log twenty-inches thick, its heart
still sound, was encountered beneath the mossy mold, squarely athwart
the course of the canal. The beavers had cut through other logs that
lay on the surface; but the buried pine did not interfere with their
plan or purpose, apparently. After clearing away the earth on top of
the log, they dug an opening beneath it and continued their ditch on
the other side, thus allowing the water to flow over and under the
obstruction. When the time came for towing their material through the
canal, the slippery top of the pine offered hardly more resistance than
the water itself.
Here the beavers had not only spared themselves unnecessary labor,
but had shown a rare degree of intelligence in the process. So the
question arises, Why did they bother with a canal at all, since they
move material overland on occasion, and they could have dragged a
supply of alders to the stream with half the effort required for their
extraordinary digging?
I had camped weeks near this beaver family, puzzled by their work,
before answer came from an unexpected actor. Lynxes were uncommonly
abundant; they prowl by night, when the beaver works, and they are
ravenously fond of young-beaver meat. They suggest the fact that all
the beaver’s works are intended primarily for security, and that the
element of safety is probably uppermost in his mind when he digs a
canal. On land he is slow, clumsy, almost defenseless; in the water
he is at home, a match for any animal at either swimming or fighting.
Undoubtedly he feels safer in his canal, where he can defend himself
or get away under water, than he can possibly feel in woods or meadows
that offer him no refuge from his enemies. So he always starts digging
at the stream’s edge, and works toward his grove of wood (never in the
opposite direction, from grove to stream), and so the friendly water
goes with him, filling his canal as fast as he digs it, offering him a
way of escape at every instant.
It is significant, in this connection, that beavers do not use a pond
that has no outlet or inlet. Hundreds of such spring-fed ponds are
scattered through the north, some of them desirable from a beaver’s
viewpoint; yet I have never found a sign to indicate that Hamoosabik
has visited them. But if the pond have even a trickle of water running
out of it, he will surely find it, no matter how distant it may be.
The method is very simple, I think. Swimming up or down river on his
endless exploration (for Hamoosabik is the pioneer among wood folk,
forever pushing out himself or sending forth his progeny to new
regions), he catches a flavor of different water, and follows it from
river to brook, from brook to runlet, till he finds the pond it came
from. And if he likes the place, after exploring all its watershed, he
will bring his mate or family there for winter quarters.
In his journeying from place to place, likewise, Hamoosabik invariably
follows the watercourses. His objective may be only a mile away in a
direct line; but to reach it he will travel five or ten times that
distance, making his way down one brook or river and up another to the
pond he is seeking. If a brook is shallow, the beavers hurry over it,
leaving only a few tracks to mark their passing; but if they intend to
use the brook again, either for gathering building material or as a
trail between their new home and the colony from which they came, they
deepen the channel here and there by dam or excavation. And commonly
at such places there is a hidden burrow, with entrance under water, in
which the beavers may take refuge if surprised by their enemies.
These emergency burrows, which Hamoosabik prepares beside a regular
trail or near the site of his lodge, always start from the bottom of
the pond or stream, and slant upward to a spot under a tree’s roots,
above high-water level. There he excavates a rough den, a little den
if he has only a mate to consider, or a big den if he has brought a
family with him. Finding such a refuge with its secret approach, one
is reminded of New England pioneers, who built hiding places in their
chimneys or cellars as a precaution against Indian attack.