Mountain Lion
© by C. L. Reed, Jr.
Bighorn Mountain Sheep
Early one evening, two days later, I peeped through the willows near the south end of the canal and saw an aspen pole with two or three twigs and several leaves fluttering from it. It was moving down the canal toward the house. The old beaver was propelling this. Both forepaws were against the end of the pole and he pushed it speeding toward the house at the lower end of the canal. He left this pole in the water and returned for another, then another.
When he arrived with the third there were two beavers dragging the other poles over the short wet space between the end of the canal and the edge of the pond.
These aspens were being canned in the water—stored in the pond—from which during the winter they would be dragged in short sections up into the house and their bark eaten.
A green aspen commonly water-logs and sinks inside of thirty-six hours. The beavers were simply piling one pole on another, evidently realizing that the sinking would follow.
The following afternoon I saw the old beaver in the aspen grove gnawing away at a seven-inch aspen. This was nearly cut off. In giving the finishing bites he tiptoed, edged around the stump this way, then that. When it began to crack and settle he started toward the canal. He caught a small piece of aspen in his teeth, dragged this down into the canal and left it, and swam on down to the house.
In the water-filled basin at the end of the canal apparently the fresh cuttings were collected and later transferred by water to their place of deposit in the pond. These aspen chunks were from five to eight feet long, were parts of small aspen tree trunks freshly cut off at each end.