“Good boy!” cried Ben, enthusiastically. “That’s shooting.”
Ed called it a good-luck shot, but his comrades called it skill. They gathered the ducks and started for the beaver lodges and dam, which were still some distance away.
The brook widened and became deeper. They saw a muskrat house, and one of the small, brown inmates swimming close by. Ben said that these little creatures were near cousins to the beavers. He restrained the lads from shooting, since the fur was not yet prime, and promised that there would be plenty of opportunity to hunt and trap the “rats” later.
The stream at length led into what appeared to be a mill-pond. In the center they saw a large, dome-shaped mass of mud and sticks raised above the water. This was the beaver house or lodge. Ben pointed to the long, curving dam across the head of the pond. He explained how, when the current of a brook was strong, the beavers curved their dam upstream to withstand the surge of the water.
BEAVER HOUSES
They paddled to the house, and the boys were astonished to find it so large. Near it was a pile of short, green logs and sticks, a supply of winter food. They observed that the smaller end of each stick was thrust into the mud to prevent it from floating away.
They were puzzled at not finding any doorway in the house; but Ben explained that the entrance was under water, and he told them how the beavers traveled about beneath the ice. The muskrats, he added, built their houses in much the same way, except that instead of small logs and large sticks they made use of grasses and weed-stalks.
Then he paddled to the shore, and they alighted. Here they saw the round, blunt-pointed stumps and tree-butts chiseled by the beavers’ sharp teeth, and Ben explained how they cut the trees. He said, when beavers find a suitable tree they sit up on their haunches and gnaw away the bark, working slowly about the trunk in a circle. Then they go around again and chisel out pieces of the wood itself. This they continue to do until they penetrate to the heart of the tree, and presently it falls. Then they gnaw off the smaller limbs and branches, which are collected and floated to the dam or lodge.
Ben added, some people claim that the beavers always cut a tree so that it will fall in any desired direction. But he said he did not believe this, for he had seen hundreds of trees which the beavers had felled in the most inconvenient places, and others that, through careless cutting, had lodged against adjacent trunks and failed to come to the ground at all.