Camping at Cherry Pond

by Henry Abbott

On another day we decided to suspend hunting operations and go over to Otter Pond, about a mile away, to inspect the lumber operations of a colony of beavers that live there; so we left our guns in camp, and Bige carried a boat over the trail, while I took my camera.

Just as we emerged from the woods we saw on the shore of Otter Pond, quietly browsing and about seventy-five yards away, a big buck deer having five prongs on each horn.

"Gosh!" said Bige.

We looked at him some minutes before he discovered our presence and loped off into the woods. It was as fine a shot as we shall ever have if we hunt the balance of our lives, but our guns were a mile away.

While paddling across the pond and near an island we heard a squeaking sound such as a lot of mice might make. Stopping the boat to listen, we soon saw, on a partly sunken log, six young mink. They were about the size of kittens when a week old. We sat quietly watching them a few minutes, when the mother mink came to the surface with a trout about five inches long in her mouth. She swam to the log and laid the fish on it, when the little ones scrambled for it, tearing it into shreds in a jiffy. They fought over the last scrap while the mother mink dove under the water again, and we continued across the pond to the beaver house which was on the opposite shore.

The Beaver House

This beaver house was made of sticks of wood of varying size fastened together by mud. It was cone-shaped and placed on the bank with one edge in the water. It was about fifteen feet in diameter at the base and seven feet high at the center. There were five separate canals or ditches sunk below the bottom of the pond, all entering the house under its base and about four feet below the surface of the water. These allowed the beaver entrance and exit when the ice was very thick in winter.

We stopped our boat alongside, pounded on the roof with the paddle and waited for a response. We heard a murmur of beaver talk inside, and in two or three minutes there came a sudden splash directly behind us and a shower of water poured over my head and down the back of my neck. The grandfather beaver, the largest of his tribe, had come out through one of the cellar passages, under the boat, had come to the surface behind us, had lifted his tail, which was as broad and flat as Bige's paddle, and slapped the water with it, throwing spray at least six feet into the air. When I caught sight of him he was in the act of diving, but he presently came to the surface again, about fifty feet away, and started swimming toward the opposite shore. I wanted his portrait for my collection, so we went paddling after him. Five or six times we got near enough to focus the camera on him and press the button at just the instant when he slapped the water and dove under. The result was a half-dozen pictures of fountains but no beaver.