Wood-folk comedies

by William J. Long

All around you is beauty, quietude, immensity; upon you is the spell of the silent places. The wild meadow with its blossoming grass, over which the wind runs in waves of light and shadow; the big woods, which seem always to be listening; the everlasting hills with their sentinel pines,—all these remind you of a day when God looked upon a new creation, “and behold, it was very good.” Even the graceful canoe, which has borne you silently through a vast silence, seems part of a harmonious landscape. But that crude heap yonder, surely that is not the famous dwelling you have read about and longed to see! One look at the formless thing is enough to dispel all your illusions of beaver intelligence. You expected something rare, an abode finely or wonderfully wrought; you see a pile of sticks, big and scraggly, as if a huge hawk’s nest had tumbled out of a tree and landed upside down.

Such is your first impression of a beaver’s winter house, making you doubt whether the maker of such a poor abode has any more brains in his head than a delving woodchuck. But when you push the sticks aside and find that they conceal a careful work beneath; when you reflect that the beaver gave a cunning last touch to his handiwork in order to make it look like drift stuff cast up by the waters; when you slowly uncover dam, transportation canal, emergency burrows, storehouse, and other works of which this rude house was once the hopeful center,—then your illusions come back multiplied, and you ask questions of a different kind, no longer scornful, but truth-seeking. Your first view discloses only a formless heap of sticks, because you view it from without as a stranger; your last view, as you turn away regretfully, brings sympathetic understanding of the brave little pioneer who looks out from the sticks as from a familiar home, and is well content with what he sees because he has proved himself master of circumstance.

The first of your new questions deals with the height of the lodge, which is its most variable feature. One beaver builds a high lodge, another a low; or the same beaver may erect a six-foot house one season, and the next be content with a dwelling that will hardly be noticeable when the snow covers it. In your thought this varying height is associated with a strange weather prediction; for as in childhood you were told that a low or high muskrat’s house was sure sign of a mild or severe winter, so when you visit beaver land you shall hear that this relative of the muskrat is an unerring weather prophet. “When the beaver builds high and solid, look for deep snow and intense cold” runs the saying, and your proper state of mind is one of wonder at the mysterious instinct which enables the animal to know what kind of winter he is facing, and to build his house accordingly.

Now the beaver, like other wild creatures, is an excellent weather prophet. When you find him working leisurely by night, and sleeping from early dawn till the stars come out, you may confidently expect a continuation of Indian-summer weather; but when you find him rushing his work by day-and-night labor, it is time for you to head out of the woods (if you travel by canoe) before a freeze-up blocks all the waterways. From these and other signs, which woodsmen point out, one might judge that the beaver knows what kind of weather to expect for the next day or two; but there his foreknowledge stops, being sufficient for his needs. The weather of next winter cannot possibly concern him when he builds his house; the height or solidity of his walls is not determined by fear of cold or anticipation of a heavy snowfall. What should he care for cold who has the warmest of furs on his back, or for snow who has a weather-proof roof over his head?

No, the problem which a beaver faces is the single problem of rising or falling water. Therefore the height of his dwelling will never be determined by season, but always by locality. If he selects one place for a winter habitation, he will build a high lodge; if he decides that another place is better, he will be satisfied with a low lodge. In either place his house, whether high or low, will prove to be just the right height nine times out of ten, and perhaps oftener. Indians assert that a beaver never repeats a mistake. They seem to think of him as they think of themselves when they say, “If you fool-um Injun once, that’s your fault. If you fool-um twice, that’s Injun’s fault.”

To understand the problem as Hamoosabik faces it every autumn, we must remember that the lodge is to be his home during the winter, until streams are clear of ice and he can once more seek his food along the banks. He builds by choice on low ground, beside a quiet stream, because he finds there alders for building material, abundant mud for mortar, soft banks for refuge burrows, and broad levels through which to run his transportation canals. Such places are overflowed in the spring, some more, some less; and it is this varying overflow which the beaver anticipates by the height of his dwelling, as he provides against wolves or lynxes by thick walls that cannot be broken.

Near the top of the lodge is the living room, from which a tunnel leads down through lodge and bank to a store of food-wood under the ice. Since the water in this tunnel rises or falls with the level of the pond, it follows that the living room must be high enough to give assurance that the water will not enter and drown the beaver against his own roof. Once his living room is flooded, he must escape through the tunnel, find an opening in the ice of his pond, and take his chance with hungry enemies in the snow-filled woods. A beaver does that once in a lifetime, perhaps, when he builds a low lodge in a place which calls for a high one; but he will not do it a second time, or a first, if instinct can anticipate or industry prevent it.

We begin to understand now what is in the animal’s head while he speeds his work during the beautiful Indian-summer days, when a soft haze rests like a dream on the hills, and waters grow still as if to hold the reflection of tranquil skies, of russet meadows, of woods agleam with crimson and gold. He must abide here in a narrow room when all this beauty and tenderness have passed into the cold gray or gleaming white of winter; that the time is short he hears from the trumpets of wild geese wending southward over his head. Food for his growing family, a pond to store it in, a canal for transportation, a number of safety burrows,—all these must be provided not in haphazard fashion, but carefully and in order. If his food-wood be stored too early, it will hold enough sap to cause the bark to sour under water, which means calamity; or if it be gathered too late, a frost may close the canal through which it must be towed to the storehouse. Not till these preliminary works are finished does Hamoosabik rear his winter lodge, with its living room wherein his family may gather in comfort by day or sleep without fear at night, while trees crack under the intense cold, and the howl of a hungry wolf goes searching through the woods.

While beavers are building their lodge, the water in all wilderness streams is low, as a rule, for it is the end of the summer season; but before spring comes the water will be high, and much higher in some places than in others. The important matter, therefore, is to plan a house suitable for the locality in which it stands; high enough, that is, to prevent rising water from flooding the living room, but not a handbreadth higher than the place demands for security. An overhigh house is too noticeable, too glaring; and Hamoosabik is like other wood folk in that he strives to be inconspicuous. The last thing any bird or beast cares to do is to draw attention to the place where he lives; that is as true of eagle or bear as of hummingbird or chipmunk.

Weighing these matters as we stand beside a beaver lodge, our question returns in another form. It is no longer a question of foretelling winter weather, but of anticipating early-spring conditions of land and water, and it reads, By what strange instinct does the beaver build now high, now low, and always just high enough to keep his living room above the crest of the coming floods? That is the rule in beaver land, with enough exceptions in the way of drowned lodges and homeless beavers to make it an interesting rule, not a mere “dead” certainty.