makes a pond by damming the stream below his lodge; but if he finds
plentiful food near a natural lake having depth enough for safety,
he uses that lake just as it is, thus avoiding the difficult job of
building a dam. If he makes a pond that proves too shallow for his need
or too slow in filling (the latter occurs frequently in dry weather),
instead of running the risk of being frozen in before he is ready for
winter he will dig channels in the bottom of his pond, and so provide
the needed depth of water in another way. For winter lodging he must
have a solid structure of two rooms, lower entrance hall and upper
living room, with a stairway between;[3] but when he occasionally
builds a house for summer use he is content with a simpler shack, as if
it were not worth while to build solidly for a few weeks of pleasant
weather.
The walls of a summer house are lightly constructed of grass and mud,
over which a few weathered sticks may be thrown for the apparent
purpose of concealment. The interior is a single large room, with a
floor that either slants upward from the front or water side or else is
arranged in two distinct levels or benches. The slanting floor is the
work of a young pair of beavers, as a rule; the two-bench arrangement
indicates that the lodge is used by more experienced builders. From
the lower bench a passage through the wall opens directly on the air,
at the brink of the stream; from the upper bench a hidden tunnel leads
down through the bank, and emerges in deep water.
One curious fact about these summer houses is that a beaver always
enters by the open door, and always comes out by the subaqueous tunnel.
One can understand why he should enter by the door, because he stops
just within to let water drain from his outer coat before climbing
to his dry nest. The tunnel goes direct to the sleeping bench; if he
entered by that route, he must drag a lot of water into his bed. But
that Hamoosabik should refuse to go out of his open door appears as an
oddity, until by long watching you become acquainted with his cautious
habits. Thus, if you surprise him outside his summer house, he will
not enter it (showing you where it is) so long as you remain in the
neighborhood, but will hide in one of his refuge burrows. And if you
surprise him at home, he will make an unseen exit under your very eyes.
This is the method of it, when you watch from your canoe in the summer
twilight:
During the day the family sleep in their nests of grass on the upper
bench, all but one old beaver, who is on guard near the entrance; for
that open door of the summer house (a winter lodge has no opening in
the walls) may invite an intruder or an enemy. As the shadows deepen
into dusk, and waters fill with soft colors of the afterglow, the
watchman bestirs himself for his night’s work; but still he is careful
not to show himself at the open door. Instead of making the easy and
obvious exit, he climbs the sleeping bench, slips down through the
tunnel, and lifts eyes and ears among the shadows under the bank, where
he cannot be seen. After watching there awhile, he sinks without a
sound and swims away under water. You are watching the lodge keenly
when your eye catches a ripple breaking the reflection of sky and
sleeping woods, or your ear hears a low call, like the flutter of a dry
leaf in the wind. There is your beaver, at last, not where you looked
for him at the door of his lodge, but far away on the other side of
your canoe!
Again, as showing the beaver’s grasp of a natural situation, when he
finds a wild meadow with a stream meandering through it, and decides
to use it for winter quarters, his work is so simple as to appear like
play. That meadow was once, undoubtedly, the bed of a beaver pond; it
became a meadow because of rich soil which the stream brought down in
flood, year after year, filling the pond and giving wild grasses a
chance to root and blossom there. The beaver may not know this ancient
history, that the perfect place he selects was made perfect by an
ancestor who pioneered this region long ago; but he does know, or soon
finds out, that water, soil, food-wood, building material,--everything
is precisely suited to his needs. After locating his grove of poplar,
he goes down to the foot of the meadow and builds a dam across the
stream. Since he is careful to pick the best spot for building, the
chances are that he will place the dam where his unknown ancestor
placed it; if you dig beneath the new structure, you will find the
solid foundation of the old. As the water flows back, being checked in
its onward course by the dam, the grasses slowly disappear until their
heads are covered, and presently the meadow is a beaver pond once more.
Then without hurry or anxiety a goodly store of food is gathered, a
lodge rises on the shore, and the family have all things ready before
winter comes and the ice locks them in.
It is a different story when Hamoosabik settles in a new place, which
no beaver ever used before, and then you see what pioneer stuff is in
him. What with building his dam (always a troublesome element in a new
place), or getting the right level to his pond or the proper height to
his lodge, or running safety burrows and transportation canal through
soil that may show rocks or clay where he expected easy digging, our
little settler is up to his ears in work, and faces a new problem every
evening. He is still working and planning, adding a last stick to the
food pile or putting a spillway on the dam, which already gives him
more water than he needs, when as he rises from his tunnel on a nipping
night he bumps his head against the top of his pond, and knows that he
is frozen in. Then, seeing he has done all a beaver can do, he settles
down with pioneer courage to face the winter, the lazy winter, when
from dawn to dusk he will be sociable with his family, and from dusk to
dawn they will all sleep without fear in their warm living room.
What a curious life they live for six long months every year! By night
the lodge and tunnel must be places of almost absolute darkness; yet
even after nightfall, should the need arise, beavers go to every part
of their pond and return, finding their way without seeing, I think,
by their unerring sense of locality. By day a little light filters
through the walls of the lodge, enough to make the gloom visible, and
then the beavers use their eyes once more,--wonderful eyes, which adapt
themselves alternately to thick darkness and the blinding glare of
sunlight on pure snow.
No sooner does the sun rise than beavers, young and old, are all
stirring eagerly, cleaning their house, exploring the pond under the
ice for a relish of lily roots, bringing in their daily fare of bark,
and finally, when hunger and need of exercise are satisfied, gathering
in the big living room for an hour of sociability. At such a time, if
you approach softly from leeward and lay your ear to the lodge, you
may hear a low, rapidly whispered _thup-a, thup-a, thup-a, thup-a_,
which is made by the vibration of a beaver’s lips when he is surprised
or pleased. There is a moment of silence after the call, then a babel
of voices, squeaky or whining or bumbling voices, as if little and big
beavers were talking all at once.
As the short winter day fades into the long night, the gloom thickens
in the arched living room. Voices are hushed; not a sound comes from
the lodge, which is covered with a blanket of snow. In the forest an
owl hoots, or a wolf wails to the sky, or a stealthy tread is heard as
some night prowler climbs the lodge for a sniff at the ventilator. That
hungry beast is only three or four feet away; but the beavers care not;
their house is burglar-proof. Its one doorway leads down through the
bank to water under the ice, and no enemy can come from that direction.
When the prowler goes away, an old beaver stirs himself; like a
watchman he goes down the stairway to the tunnel, finds the water at
its safe level, comes back whining a low call, and curls up in his bed
with a satisfied grunt. Then the family fall asleep, each in his own
nest; in their ears is a little song, the endless song of the spillway
with its quieting burden, _All’s well with our world; all’s well!_
Yes, a curious life, monotonous and dismal, or cheery and forever
expectant, according as you view it from without or from within. Coming
upon the lodge now, you see only a mound of white swelling above the
expanse of pond or beaver meadow, and beyond stand ranks of evergreen,
dark and silent. That mound is as dull or dead as anything else in the
somber landscape until, as you pass indifferently, your eye catches a
wisp of vapor, like a breath, or your ear detects a faint _plop, plop_,
as bodies slide down into the tunnel one after another. In an instant
the whole landscape changes, as it always does change, and glow and
fall away into the golden frame of a picture, when a living creature
moves across the face of it. The mound is no longer a dull mass, but
the fascinating abode of life; the wilderness sun rises or sets not on
snow and ice, but on work, play, companionship, and all else that makes
life the one interesting and eternally mysterious thing in the universe.
So when my friend of the telescope looks in, as I write this, and
tries to stir my lagging enthusiasm for the satellites of Jupiter or
the vastness of the Milky Way, I find myself thinking that Jupiter
might allure me if there were a beaver lodge on its meadows, and that
I shall never feel any human interest in stars or interstellar spaces
until someone discovers a squirrel track on the Milky Way.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
COMEDIANS ALL
While watching a chipmunk one summer, a fascinating little fellow whom
I had tamed till he would sit on my knee to beg with eloquent eyes for
nuts or rice or sweet chocolate, I learned first the location of his
den, and then, when he abandoned it for a roomy winter storehouse, the
whole secret of his building.
For years our naturalists have debated the mystery of the squirrel’s
digging, how he can excavate den or tunnel without leaving fresh earth
at the entrance to betray him; but when I was a boy any farmer’s lad
in the countryside could have given instant explanation. “How does a
chipmunk dig a hole without leaving any earth at the entrance? Why,
very simply; he begins at the other end.” And though the answer is
true, beyond cavil or gainsaying, some doubting Thomas who clothes
all animal action in a mysterious fog of instinct is bound to make
hocus-pocus of the chipmunk’s art by demanding, “But how does he get to
the other end?”
That also is simple; but you will not appreciate the answer till you
know by observation that a chipmunk never digs a den. He trusts nature
for that, contenting himself with furnishing a suitable tunnel and
doorway.
In some way (probably by tapping the earth, as a woodpecker sounds a
limb to see if it be hollow) Chick’weesep learns that there is a den
under a certain tree or rock, a natural hollow engineered by frost or
rain or settling earth, which by a little alteration may be made to
serve his double need of room and safety. At any rate, it will do no
harm to go down and have a look at it; he can find another if he is not
satisfied.
Starting at a distance, for a chipmunk wants no sign of occupation
near his den, he runs a slanting shaft down to the concealed hollow,
throwing the earth from his excavation in a loose heap about the
spot where he began to dig. Later he may scatter that heap if it
looks conspicuous; but since he does not intend to use this shaft as
an entrance, the disturbed earth gives him little concern. Next he
modifies the natural hollow by a day’s or a week’s operations, making
it over into a living room with two or three adjacent storerooms; and
the final step is to run a tunnel from the finished den upward to the
air. The first or exploration shaft is as straight as he can make
it; but the new tunnel takes a devious course, following under roots
where digging is very easy or where there is sometimes no digging at
all. Also it heads well away from the den, so that when it reaches the
surface the outlet is far from the scene of the first digging. A part
of the earth from this tunnel is thrown back into the den, and from
there is pushed into the working shaft, which is always filled solidly
from end to end. The finished den has but one entrance, therefore; and
there is no earth about the doorway for the simple reason that the
whole tunnel was excavated from below.
Such is the process in our cleared lands, where Chick’weesep’s doorway
may be in the middle of a lawn, while his storehouse is far away in
a hidden drain or under a buried bowlder. On such lands, if you find
the squirrel’s doorway and search the ground in all directions, you
may discover at a considerable distance a flattened heap of earth,
which will mean nothing unless you know the chipmunk’s secret. That
heap speaks of the time when he ran an exploration shaft down to his
unseen den; it tells also, if you listen to it, of the sad way in which
civilization has interfered with the perfection of the squirrel’s
craft. He must leave that plain sign of his work and presence
(unwillingly, I think) because so much clearing has been done without
consulting his small needs that he can find no convenient place to hide
a quantity of fresh earth.
In the deep woods, where Chick’weesep’s ancestors learned to construct
winter quarters, such a telltale sign is never found. The forest floor
offers him a thousand hiding places; before beginning to dig he slips
under a root or rock or moldering log, and from there runs a shaft
to his objective point. The earth from his digging is packed away
under mossy logs, where no eyes but his ever see it; and when the den
is ready the working shaft is filled by earth from a new tunnel, as
Chick’weesep bores his way toward the point where he intends to have
his doorway. Like the beaver, he seems to have a perfect sense of
direction; engineering his tunnel under the earth, turning this way or
that to follow a friendly root, he seems to know precisely where he is
coming out. From watching him several times when he was busy about his
den, I think that he selects a spot for his doorway before starting
his tunnel; but that is a doubtful matter of which no man has any
assurance.
To fashion such a den and fill its storeroom to overflowing in the
beautiful autumn days must be a joyous experience, I fancy, even to
an unthinking squirrel. On a farm the happiest days of the year are
not those of spring planting (for sowing of seeds is an artificial
work, the result of our thought and calculation), but rather in the
rewardful autumn, when man’s primitive instincts are stirred as he
gathers the fruits of the earth into his winter storehouse. Likewise
in the wilderness, the happiest days which ever come to a man are
those in which he builds a shack by the labor of his hands, fashions a
rude fireplace of rock or clay, lays in his provisions, and then, with
eager anticipation of snappy days afield or stormy nights before the
fire, looks upon his finished work and says in his heart, “Now welcome,
winter!” If spoiled man can feel this instinctive joy of providing for
creature comfort, why not an unspoiled squirrel also? In the woods all
natural creatures, man included, seem to be made of the same happy,
elemental stuff.
Once the den is ready, with living quarters, dry nest for sleeping, and
a storeroom filled with the seeds he likes best, Chick’weesep faces
the winter with a merry heart. He can commiserate the deer or the
moose birds, who must be abroad in all weather and ofttimes hungry;
or can chuckle at the sleepyhead bears, who must spend all winter
days in oblivion, having a den but no store of food, and who miss the
enjoyment of eating and of roaming abroad when the weather is fine.
From the secret entrance to his den a tunnel pushes outward under the
snowdrifts, a cunning runway that hides beneath twisted roots before it
ventures up to the surface. On every pleasant day Chick’weesep makes
use of that outlet to enjoy the world from the sunny side of a ledge.
There he can safely watch all that passes in the woods; while rock
ferns that are always green serve to hide him or to rest his eyes from
the blinding glare of sunlight on the snow. When storms are loosed and
the great trees bend to the driving sleet, he bides snug in his den
underground, and there eats till he grows sleepy or sleeps till he
grows hungry, or until something calls him with information that the
sun is shining and wood folk are passing in the upper world once more.
A chipmunk’s eating, therefore, however enjoyable it may be on stormy
days, is not by any means his sole winter occupation. It is merely one
element in a season that has many pleasures, and it brings out this
curious habit: Chick’weesep eats the softest of his grains first, as a
farmer begins with the mellowest of his apples, reserving the hardest
till the end. To judge from dens I have examined, his storehouse has
two or more compartments, one near the frost line, another below; and
in the colder room, chilled by glittering ice crystals, he seems to
keep such of his foods as are most easily spoiled. Meanwhile his living
quarters are beyond the line of frost, where, thanks to his dry nest
and his fur jacket, he is always comfortably warm. Should worst come to
worst, and his store prove too small for a long winter, even then he
has this quieting assurance: like the gray squirrel, who has alternate
periods of winter activity and retirement, he can curl up in his nest
and sleep for a week or a month, if need be, until spring returns to
melt the snows, and he can once more find a living in the awakening
woods.
Altogether a happy kind of a life, one must think, and Chick’weesep
gives the impression of making endless comedy of it. He is a most
entertaining actor, especially when he shows his curiosity, which is
so great that he will stop his work or rush out of his den to see
any large animal or small bird that is making commotion in the quiet
woods. Of all smaller animals and larger birds he is wary, since the
one may turn out a weasel and the other an owl or a goshawk; and all
such freebooters are dangerous to chipmunks. From a distance, as you
roam the solitude, your eye happens to catch him sitting motionless on
his favorite stump, where his coat blends with the sunshine and the
wonderful forest colors. Heading in his direction, you aim to pass
close by, but not too close, as if seeking something far ahead.
Chick’weesep watches you keenly as you draw near, and he is so pleased
or excited that he cannot keep still. You see his eye sparkle, his
feet dance, his body quiver, as he wavers between the lifelong habit
of concealment and his evident desire to be noticed by this bold
passing animal, who is surely a stranger in the woods, since his
foot is noisy. On you come steadily, paying no heed to the tiny atom
of life that watches you expectantly, like a child at a window who
hopes to be saluted; and Chick’weesep follows you with questioning
eyes till you have passed him and are going away. Up to this moment
he has been half afraid you might see him; now, fearful that you will
not see, he blows a sharp whistle or cries his full Indian name,
_Chick-chick-koo-wee-sep!_ to tell you that you are in his woods, and
that you have passed him without a sign of recognition.
A hundred times I have had a heart-warming over that little comedy,
which always follows the same course. There is the first start of
surprise when the little fellow sees you, the eager look, the
quivering feet, the timid expectancy; then the sharp cry as you pass
with apparent indifference. And when you turn quickly, as if surprised,
Chick’weesep dodges out of sight with a different cry, a cry with
mingled pleasure and alarm in it; but the next moment he is peeking at
you with dancing eyes from a crevice. Then, if you bide quietly where
you are, he may come nearer, talking as he comes; and within the hour,
should you have food that he likes, he will be sitting with entire
confidence on your knee, stuffing all you offer him into his cheek
pockets till they bulge as if he had the mumps, or pulling with all his
might at a choice bit which you hold tightly to tease him.
A red squirrel would nip you if you teased him like that; but
Chick’weesep braces himself with soft paws against the tips of your
fingers, and tugs till he gets his morsel. This is the deep wilderness,
where he has not been made to know the fear of man, and where he is the
most lovable of all his merry tribe, excepting only Molepsis the flying
squirrel.
* * * * *
As with the little, so also with the larger wood folk, even those whom
we ignorantly call savage; when you meet without frightening them in
their native woods, they all seem to be playing at comedy for the
greater part of their days. I suppose there are no animals that have
given rise to more fearsome stories than the wolves and bears, one a
symbol of ravin, the other of ferocity; but when you meet the real wolf
he turns out to be a very shy beast, one that has a doglike interest in
man, but is afraid to show it openly; and Mooween the bear, far from
being the terrible creature of literary imagination, is in reality a
harmless vagabond whose waking life is one long succession of whims and
drolleries.
The trouble is, on first meeting a bear, that one is so frightened by
the brute, or so eager to kill, that one never opens his eyes frankly
to see what kind of fellow blunderer is before him. Several times, when
I have had the luck to find bears among the blueberries of the burnt
lands, I have crept near to watch them (it is quite safe so long as you
do not blunder between an old she-bear and her cubs), and their droll
attitudes, their greed, their lively interest in something to eat,
their comical ways of stripping a berry bush or robbing an ant’s nest,
their watchfulness lest one of their number discover something good
and eat it all by himself, their surprises and alarms, their piglike
fits of excitement, their whimsical and ever-changing expression,--all
this is so unexpected, so entertaining, that a few minutes of it will
change your whole opinion of the bear’s character. You meet him as a
dangerous beast; you leave him, or he leaves you, with the notion that
he is the best of all natural comedians.
Here, for example, is an illuminating show of bear nature, one of a
score which you uncover with surprise as you follow Mooween’s trail.
When a cub finds a toothsome morsel he sweeps it instantly into his
mouth, if it be small enough to swallow; but if it offers several
mouthfuls, the first thing he does is to look alertly about to see
where the other cubs are. If they are near or watching him, he sits on
his morsel and pretends to be surveying the world, wagging his head
from side to side; but if they are busy with their own affairs, he
comes between them and his find, turning his back on them while he eats.
One might think this little deception a mere accident until it is
repeated, or until this supplemental bit of bear psychology bubbles
up to the surface. When a cub sees another cub with back turned,
holding still in one place, he first stares hard, his face an
exclamation point, as if he could not believe his eyes. Then he cries,
_ur-rump-umph!_ and comes on the jump to have a share of whatever
the fortunate one has uncovered. Knowing what it means when he turns
his own back, I suppose, he jumps to the conclusion that he is like
all other greedy cubs, or that other cubs are just like him. To a
spectator the most amusing part of the comedy is that, when a cub is
discovered in his greediness, he seems to treat it as a joke, gobbling
as much as possible of his find, but showing no ill temper if another
cub arrives in time to have a bite of it. “Get away with it if you can,
but don’t squeal if you are caught” seems to be the sporting rule of
a young bear family. As they grow older they become unsociable, even
morose; and occasionally one meets a bear that seems to be a regular
sorehead.