In Beaver World

by Enos A. Mills

Our Friend the Beaver

One bright autumn afternoon I peered down into a little meadow by a beaver pond. This meadow was grass-covered and free from willows. In it seven or eight beaver were at work along a new canal. Each kept his place and appeared to have a section in which he did his digging. For more than half an hour I watched them clawing out the earth and grass-roots and lifting it out in double handfuls and piling it in an orderly line along the canal-bank. While I was watching a worker at one end of this line, two others clinched in a fight. The fighters made no sound except a subdued guttural mumbling as they rolled about in a struggle. The other workers, to my astonishment, paid not the slightest attention to this fight, but each attended to his own affairs. After two or three minutes the belligerents broke away; one squatted down breathing heavily, while the other, with bloody tail, dragged himself off and plunged into the pond. This was the first beaver fight that I had ever seen.

Beaver may well be called the silent workers. No matter how numerous, or crowded, or busy they are, their work goes on without a word and apparently without a sign. Although I have seen them at work scores of times, in the twilight and in the daylight, singly, in pairs, and by the dozens, doing the many kinds of work which beaver perform, yet this work has always gone quietly and without any visible evidences of management. Each one is capable of acting independently. Since the quality of his work improves as the beaver increases his experience, it appears natural and probable that each colony of beaver has a leader who plans and directs the work. I am familiar with a number of instances which strongly indicate leadership. In times of emergency, when an entire colony is forced to emigrate, a beaver—and usually an aged one—takes the lead, and wherever he goes the others willingly follow.

Whatever may have been the custom of beaver in the past, at present large numbers sometimes coöperate in accomplishing community work. It used to be believed, and possibly it was true, that only the members of a family, or the beaver of one house, united in doing the general work of the colony. It was a common belief that seven beaver inhabited a house; perhaps eight was the number of the Rocky Mountain region. At the present time the number in a house is from one to thirty.

Beaver have been driven from most of the streams and lake-shores, and now maintain themselves with difficulty in the places which they inhabit. In surviving they probably have had to sacrifice a few old customs and to adopt some new ones, and it is likely that these changes sometimes call for larger houses so as to care for the increased number of beaver which conditions now compel to live in one locality. A number of instances have come under my notice where beaver were driven from their colony either by fire or by the aggressiveness of trappers; these moved on to other scenes, where they cast their lot with the beaver of another colony, and apparently were received with every welcome. Immediately after the arrival of the immigrants, enlargements were at once commenced, apparently to accommodate the new-comers permanently.

One autumn, while following the Lewis and Clark trail with a pack horse in western Montana, I made camp one evening with a trapper who gave me a young beaver. He was about one month old, and ate twigs and bark as naturally as though he had long eaten them. I named him “Diver,” and in a short time he was as chummy as a young puppy. Of an evening he played about the camp and often swam in the near-by water. At times he played at dam-building, and frequently displayed his accomplishment of felling wonderful trees that were about the size of a lead pencil. He never failed to come promptly when I whistled for him. At night he crouched near my camp, usually packing himself under the edge of the canvas on which I spread my bedding. Atop the pack on the horse’s back he traveled,—a ride which he evidently enjoyed. He was never in a hurry to be taken off, and at moving time he was always waiting eagerly to be lifted on. As soon as he noticed me arranging the pack, he came close, and before I was quite ready for him, he rose up, extending his hands in rapid succession beggingly, and with a whining sort of muttering pleaded to be lifted at once to his seat on the pack.

A YOUNG BEAVER SUNNING HIMSELF

He had a bad fright one evening. About one hour before sundown we had encamped as usual alongside a stream. He entered the water and after swimming about for a time, taking a dozen or so merry dives, he crossed to the opposite side. In plain view, only fifty feet away, I watched him as he busily dug out roots of the Oregon grape and then stopped leisurely to eat them. While he was thus engaged, a coyote made a dash for him from behind a boulder. Diver dodged, and the coyote missed. Giving a wail like a frightened child, my youngster rolled into the stream and dived. Presently he scrambled out of the water near me and made haste to crawl under my coat-tail behind the log on which I sat.

The nearest beaver pond was a quarter of a mile upstream, yet less than five minutes had elapsed from the time of Diver’s cry when two beaver appeared, swimming low and cautiously in the stream before me. A minute later another came in sight from downstream. All circled about, swimming cautiously with heads held low in the water. One scented the place where the coyote had attacked Diver, and waddled out and made a sniffing examination. Another came ashore at the spot where Diver came out to me. Apparently his eyes told him I was a part of the log, but his nose proclaimed danger. After three or four hesitating and ineffectual attempts to retreat, he plucked up courage and rose to full height on hind legs and tail to stare eagerly at me. With head well up and fore paws drooping, he held the gaze for several seconds and then gave a low whistle.