Such is Simmo’s explanation of one little comedy of errors among the wood folk. A dog or an Indian never forgets an injury, and why should not a beaver be like a dog at least? So he reasons, and I cannot answer him. He knows more about wild animals than I shall ever learn.
I have a notion, however, that there may be a better reason for the standing quarrel, a reason suggested by one lucky find in a beaver lodge after I had searched for it many years. Briefly, the notion is (and it looks odd when one puts it in cold ink) that the otter sometimes makes mockery of the beaver’s housekeeping by leaving a smelly mess of fish in a lodge that is wonderfully clean, under the noses of animals that abominate all evil smells. To appreciate the humor of such an explanation we must know how the two animals live during the long northern winter.
For five or six months every year, from November to April, the beaver is virtually a prisoner in his winter lodge. It is a small domicile, and as six or eight beavers may occupy the one, low living room, it is fortunate that they instinctively keep it very clean, and that the aroma of musk or castor fills it at all times with penetrating, antiseptic odors.
It is early autumn when a beaver family begins to think of the lodge as of a home; not an old home, but a new one, for Hamoosabik is strangely typical of America in that he is forever moving somewhere else or building a new house. All summer long the beavers lead a nomad life, wandering up or down the wilderness streams on endless exploration; but when nights have a warning chill, and days grow mellow as ripened fruit, then the heads of the family begin to look about for a place to spend the winter. There is nothing haphazard in the location; a beaver never settles on a place for winter quarters until by examination he is assured of three things: an ample food supply, a storehouse in which to keep it, and a dry lodge in which to live in comfort and security. Because he must have all these, with solitude or remoteness, you may search long in beaver land before you find where the animals have settled.
The first need of the family will be plenty of good food, and to secure that they explore the neighboring woods until they find a grove of poplars, of young poplars with tender bark. One might think that, having found their food, they would begin at once to cut and gather it; but such is not the beaver’s way. With him all things must be done not only decently, but in order. Before a beaver touches his selected trees, he examines the stream carefully to decide where he will put them; and when that matter is settled he will pick out a convenient spot for his house. As he intends to raise the water in the stream, which is too low for his purpose, and as rising water must overflow its banks, he commonly locates his house some distance back from the shore. Then, as he will be working here many days before his house is ready, or even begun, he proceeds quickly to dig three or four refuge burrows. And very cunning burrows they are, starting in hidden places near the bottom of the stream, slanting upward through the bank, and ending in a den under a tree’s roots above the flood level. He will sleep in these dens while preparing his permanent quarters; in winter he will use them as hiding places should he be driven out of his lodge.
The next important matter is a storehouse beyond reach of frost, and the only sure place for that is under water. The stream is shallow; it might easily be frozen to the bottom; but the beaver overcomes the difficulty by going downstream a little way and building a dam of logs, brush, stones and miscellaneous litter. The dam is intended to provide an artificial pond; the double object of the pond is to furnish a playground and a pool for storage, the one wide enough for winter exercise, the other deep enough to give assurance that ice can never form to the bottom of it and grip the food which is to be kept there. So we think, viewing the finished dam and seeing it serve its purpose; what the beaver thinks when he builds it, only a beaver might tell.
While the pond is filling slowly, Hamoosabik gathers his food-wood. First he fells a large number of trees by cutting around the butts with his teeth; then he trims the branches into convenient lengths, drags or rolls them to the nearest water, and floats them down to his storehouse, where he sinks them in a loose pile on the bottom. Green wood sinks easily, as a rule; if the beaver’s sticks have a tendency to bob up to the surface, where they would be frozen into the ice, he keeps them down by pressing one end into the mud. If he can use flowing water for transportation, he always does so; but he will not hesitate to tow his food-wood across a lake, if need be, or to dig a canal if his poplars stand some distance back from the water. He works by night for the most part, remaining hidden in one of his burrows by day. Any dull or rainy afternoon may bring him out; and should the weather turn severe, threatening to freeze his pond or canal before he is ready for winter, he will work day and night without rest. There will be time for sleeping when he has nothing else to do.
When the pile of food-wood grows to goodly size, and while younger members of the family are nightly adding to it, the old beavers prepare their winter lodge on the shore. Their first care, curiously enough, is for a cellarway or tunnel, which leads from the middle of the lodge ground down through the bank, and emerges at the bottom of the pond, convenient to the food pile.
Around the upper or land end of this tunnel they build their house, a solid structure from four to eight feet high, and six to twenty feet in diameter. The height depends on the expected rise of water in the spring, since one room at least must always be above high-water mark. The size varies with the number of occupants, a little lodge for a pair of beavers just starting housekeeping, and a big house for a large family. The latter usually consists of an old pair, with some “kit” beavers recently arrived in the wilderness, and half a dozen or more yearlings and two-year-olds. The materials of the lodge are brush, grass and mud, and the interior is arranged with a view to comfort and security. For safety against enemies the beavers depend on thick walls; for comfort two rooms are provided, a lower entrance hall and an upper living room, with an inclined passage or stairway between.[2]