If the winter was not too severe, the stream might be open for a while at the rapids near by, when he could replenish his store, but, floundering about in the deep snow in midwinter, leaving telltale tracks at every step, and an unmistakable beaver scent, was hazardous business. There were many creatures in the wilderness who were fiercer and stronger than the harmless beaver, and they all loved beaver meat.
As we have already seen, the bear would prowl about in beaver land, just before denning up, for a last smack of blood. The wildcat and the lynx were about as fond of beaver as of fish and they could watch for both at the same time, which made it doubly interesting. The sneaking wolverine also considered the beaver his particular titbit.
For all of these reasons Brownie would go hungry for several meals before he would venture outside to replenish his store of bark.
One evening late in November, he was leaving his burrow to go ashore and do some wood cutting when just at the entrance a premonition of danger came upon him. That peculiar sense of danger that many animals have told him that something was wrong. I have known several cases where dogs had premonitions of coming disaster in the family, and it was probably this instinctive power that told Brownie that something was waiting for him at the mouth of his burrow, so he just poked the tip of his nose out, to see what it was that made him so uncomfortable.
Quick as a flash a mighty paw armed with a raking set of claws, struck him a stunning blow in the nose. He had just sense enough left to wriggle back a few feet into the burrow, and keep quiet.
Although his nose was bleeding profusely and he had been severely stunned, in a few seconds he recovered, for without doctors, or medicine, the wild creatures have a way of recovering rapidly from any hurt.
From the strong bear scent that penetrated his burrow, Brownie knew that his enemy was a bear, even before Bruin reached his strong arm in and tried to poke him out. But he had no mind to be poked, so he wriggled out of reach and was glad that he had escaped so easily. The bear hung about the spot for a day or two, often watching cat-like at the hole. Sometimes he would go back into the woods, hoping to entrap the beaver into coming out, but Brownie had no desire to become further acquainted with the ugly fellow and so stayed in, although this two days' imprisonment hindered his wood cutting.
The next watcher at his front door was the mean, sneaking wolverine, who kept him a prisoner for two or three days more. This enemy was even more to be dreaded than the bear, for he would have dug the beaver out if the mouth of his burrow had not been so far under water. He did start to dig him out from the bank above, running a shaft down to strike the beaver den. He would have found the burrow without a doubt, but a hard freeze put a stop to his digging so he left the bank beaver and went up to the dam to try his luck with the house beavers.
All these things made Brownie's supply of wood much smaller than it should have been. But the trouble was not there. He should have been more provident, and worked earlier in the autumn when he had a chance.
Finally the ice door was shut down over lake and stream, and there was no more going out for the beaver family.