First, the entire family visited the outlet of the pond, where the Chief demonstrated to the others that with the rocky stream bed and the accumulated drift-wood, a dam would be unnecessary to maintain water in the pond at its present level. Next the house must be enlarged to make room for a family of six instead of two, as in the previous winter. When completed, the house was elliptical in shape, twenty-two feet across its base in the short diameter and thirty feet in its longer dimension. It was also increased in height to eight feet. The peeled sticks piled up under the ice during the previous winter were now utilized in making additions to the house with other sticks and brush brought from the woods.
A One Night Camp
The interior of the house was enlarged to more than twice its former size by cutting away and dragging out through the tunnels, surplus materials. In doing this, several pillars were left standing for supports to the enlarged ceiling.
Three additional tunnels were dug, making five channels for entrance and exit. Those terminating in shallow water were continued as ditches to deeper water.
The storage warehouse also was made larger and deeper, not only to provide mortar for enlarging the building, but because more food must be stored for six mouths than was required for two. A very high grade of what is called "instinct" in animals must be required to calculate and determine just how much food to store for a winter's supply for a family of a given size. It has been asserted by those who think they know, that in this matter a beaver never makes a mistake. That he also stores an extra amount of food for an unusually long and severe winter. So far as I have observed, they seem to come through the winter in good physical condition.
A picture, which I have longed to secure on a film, but which, so far, I have only been able to fix on the retina of an eye, represents a young beaver about the size of a kitten, not fully grown, in an upright position, holding in his two hands and against his breast a gob of mud, while he laboriously and clumsily struggles up the steep side of his house, on the roof of which he is about to deposit his burden. In the water, towing a young log or a bushy branch, he is much more at home and more graceful in his movements.
The following spring there came out of our beaver house, the Chief Engineer, his wife, four yearlings and a new family of five babies. The "old man" now went off on his annual exploring trip, but he took with him the four older children, while the mother and the babies remained behind. As usual, the house was deserted during the summer months. We now noted several burrows under the bank at widely separate places along shore. Sometimes the beaver would be seen entering one of these holes and again another.
It is interesting and easy, to study the habits of wild creatures, and to note how uniform are their methods and practices. It is not so easy to determine reasons for their peculiar way of doing things. It is of course permissible to speculate, but one might be expected to furnish proof, when an assertion is made. For example, it has been stated by at least two writers, that beaver desert their homes in summer so that the vermin which infest their huts may die off from starvation during the absence of their fur coated hosts.
My own guess, if I were to hazard one, would be that since a beaver house must generally be placed in an exposed position, its owners find that with the sun beating down on its roof during June, July and August, the poorly ventilated interior becomes too hot for comfort. On the other hand, I have noted that the burrows in which they live in summer, are usually found under some overhanging tree, in a cool spot where the sun never penetrates.