Wood-folk comedies

by William J. Long

The otter, also, unlike most of his weasel tribe, is a peaceable and highly interesting beast. He is a fisherman, a very expert fisherman, and finds plenty to eat without interfering with any other. So he is always in good condition, and as full of capers as a kitten. Most animals are fat and playful when they are young, growing lean and sober as they grow old; but an otter is just the opposite, having leanness and sobriety as his portion in infancy. As a kit he spends an uncommonly long time in his dark den; when he comes out he passes many an hour asleep in the water, where he lies comfortably on his back with nose in the air and paws folded on his chest. As he grows older he plays more, thickens up till he is in perfect condition, and ends by becoming the most sportive of all wild creatures. He makes one of the most affectionate of pets; and what with his constant good fare and good humor he has no more reason to quarrel with a beaver than with the man in the moon. Remember that there are no “savage” beasts except in our yards and our imagination; that the wild or natural animal does not fight unless he has a compelling motive, and not even then if he can avoid it. Why then, one must ask, do these two peaceable beasts fall upon each other whenever their trails cross?

“He is a very expert fisherman, and finds plenty to eat without interfering with any other.”

We know so little of an animal (the real animal which you meet in the woods, not the labeled skin-and-bones which you find in a book or a museum) that any answer must be guesswork, and the guess varies with the woodsman who makes it. When I put the question to a trapper I know, a silent, observant man who follows his solitary trap line every winter, he answered confidently that the otter carries a grudge around with him, and always begins the quarrel. An otter likes to have his fishing waters to himself; he is intolerant of trespassers, and in this he is like the loon, the kingfisher, the sheldrake, and other natural fishermen, all of whom seem to have definite portions of lake or river which they regard as their own.

Now the beaver is not a fisherman; but at times he interferes sadly with those who must follow that craft for a living. When he builds his dam on a trout stream, for example, it means an end of fishing in that neighborhood. The trout cannot stand his commotions, his towing of logs and alder brush, his perpetual digging of mud or roiling of water. So when an otter, coming to dine where he has caught many a good dinner, finds his favorite pool occupied or spoiled, he is in a mood to pick a bone with the offender. In a word, the otter fights because he has a grudge to settle, and the beaver fights to defend himself. Such is the trapper’s explanation.

When I asked Simmo the Indian about the matter, he said that beaver and otter both have grievances, and that when they meet unexpectedly (they avoid each other for the most part) one is quite as likely to begin hostilities as the other. An otter does not like a beaver because the latter may steal an otter kit and bring it up in his lodge as a drudge or slave. “Otter he mitcheego, very cross, ’cause beaver steal-um baby an’ make-um work,” was the way Simmo put it. The beaver is more mitcheego, because he often finds an otter monkeying with his dam or spillway. The dam is the danger-point in a beaver’s winter quarters. Any disturbance of it threatens calamity, and a break may be the herald of death; yet a roving otter can never pass a dam without raising a commotion, splashing about in a way to bring the whole beaver family rushing out of their lodge in wild alarm at the fancied danger.

Simmo is right in his facts, his observation of game or fur animals being microscopic in its accuracy; but whether he has the right explanation of the beaver-otter feud is another matter. It is true that occasionally you may find a young otter sharing the summer wanderings of a family of beaver, apparently content with the life and knowing no other. That he was brought up with the beaver kits is evident from his continued association with them; but whether the beavers stole him, as Simmo thinks; or whether he was left motherless and followed them, which is quite natural; or whether some mother beaver sought him out and suckled him, as many mother animals adopt a stranger when deprived of their young,—these are questions which no man can answer. One can observe with his eyes an otter in a beaver lodge; but only imagination can follow the trail by which he came there.

It is true also, on the other side of the feud, that the otter raises a terrible pother at a beaver dam in winter; but he does it unconsciously, I think, and for a natural reason. He is a lover of open water, and in summer he lives largely in the lakes and streams. In winter, the waters being sealed, he must wander over the vast, inhospitable expanse of ice, unable to enter his favorite pools save by some fortunate air hole. At such times he has the habit (which trappers know too well for his safety) of using every little runlet for his amusement. He may be hungry or on a journey or heading for a distant stream with a man on his trail; but he can never pass near a bit of open water without having a plunge in it. In trailing an otter I have repeatedly found where he went out of his way for no other purpose, apparently, than to play a moment in a spring or little brook that was clear of ice, after which he headed diagonally back to his former course and resumed his journey.

So it happens in winter, when an otter passes a beaver dam that has a run of water beneath it or through the spillway, that he always raises a whillilew there, splashing merrily about in the enjoyment of his own sensations. To the beaver, living in his lodge nearby, any sudden splashing of that kind means just one thing, and a fearful thing,—a break in the dam. In the autumn, or while waters are open, a broken dam is easily mended; but in midwinter even a small break may be hopeless, since the beavers cannot get through the ice of their pond to repair the damage. It means that the little opening will soon become a big opening with a flood pouring through it; that the precious store of food-wood will be frozen into a solid mass. Then the beaver family must die of starvation in their lodge, their tunnel and food pile being blocked by ice; or else, if perchance they can find or dig a way through the frozen pond, that they will probably be caught by wolves or lynxes when they forage in the snow-filled woods, where their short legs and heavy bodies make weary traveling.

One can understand, therefore, the beaver’s alarm at any disturbance of water in his spillway. Day after day he listens to its musical flow as to a quiet tune; when he falls asleep his ears drink in the melody as a sweet lullaby, telling him that all is well. Suddenly comes a pause, a break in the tune, and then a violent splashing. Down under the ice he comes, his family following at his heels, to go rushing up and down the length of the dam, peering about in the underwater gloom, trying to locate the danger. Remember that the beaver is on the upper or pond-side of the dam, while the splashing comes from the lower side, whither he cannot come because of the roof of ice over his head. And when, after much searching and tribulation, he learns that the alarm is needless, that the disturbance is caused by a careless otter amusing himself or monkeying with matters that may become dangerous—well, then he is as mad as anybody else would be; and he will remember his grievance when next he meets the cause of it.