Wood-folk comedies

by William J. Long

The answer is, probably, that instinct has nothing to do with the matter; so we may as well put that prejudice out of our heads and open our eyes. Instincts are fairly constant, so far as we know them, while floods and lodges are endlessly variable. The height of a beaver’s lodge is largely the result of observation, I think, and of very simple observation. It is noticeable that, when lodges are built by different beaver families on the lower part of a stream, they are all comparatively high; but when they appear on the head-waters of the same stream, they are uniformly low. This because the spring rise of water at the mouth of a brook is commonly much greater than at its source.

Take your stand now at either place, and look keenly about. See those frayed alders; see that level line of gray spots where living trees have been barked by floating logs; see that other line of jetsam on the shore. Here, plain as your nose, are the high-water marks of this particular locality. Every spring these marks are renewed, and the highest is ever the most conspicuous. If you can see such signs, so also can a beaver, who has excellent eyes, and who is accustomed to use them in the darkness as well as in the light. That he does see them and is guided by them is suggested by the fact that Hamoosabik’s lodge, wherever you find it, has a dome which rises just above the high-water mark of the surrounding country. Again and again I have laid a straight stick as a level on top of a beaver house, turning it in different directions and sighting along it; and almost invariably, in one direction or another, I found my glance passing just above some striking line of barked trees or drift stuff which showed where the floods had reached their height.

A beaver does not use an artificial level, to be sure; but it is doubtless as easy for him as for anyone else to know, when he sits on a hummock, whether he is above or below the level of a plain mark confronting him. Such is the probability, since all creatures have subconscious powers of coördination. The probability increases when you observe the beaver at his building operations.

One evening, just after sundown, I had the luck to watch a family of beavers at work on their winter lodge. The place was solitary; the animals had long been undisturbed, and they were hurrying the last part of their work by day as well as by night, as they do in lonely regions. As they are very shy in the light (at night they will come within reach of your paddle, if you sit motionless in your canoe), I dared not approach near enough to follow the details of their work; but this much I saw plainly, that while four or five animals were industriously gathering material and piling it up, one large beaver sat almost constantly on top of the lodge. Occasionally he moved as if to receive a troublesome stick or place it properly; but for the most part he seemed to be doing nothing. Even when it became too dark to distinguish more than moving shadows, the silhouette of that quiet beaver stood out like a watchman against the twilight.

Simmo and Tomah both tell me that such a scene is typical of beaver families at work, and that the quiet animal I had noticed, far from doing nothing, was directing the whole job. These Indians can tell at a glance whether a dam was built by young or old beavers; and they say that, if the older members of a family are trapped or killed, the young make blundering attempt at providing winter quarters. If the family is undisturbed (a beaver family is made up, commonly, of three generations), one of the parent animals takes his place on top of any dam or lodge they are building, in order to direct the work and bring it to the right level. At the same time he acts as a watchman, his elevated position giving him advantage over the working beavers, which have the habit every few minutes of dropping whatever they may be doing and sitting up on their tails for a look all around.

It is very likely, therefore, that Hamoosabik does not follow a “blind” instinct when he can use his seeing eyes. While his lodge is rising he looks forth from the top of it, seeking familiar signs to guide him, and he keeps on looking as well as building until he knows that he is above the high-water mark of the neighborhood. And then, having reared his walls to clear the flood level, he lays the floor of his upper room and puts on the roof. If waters are normal, he will have a dry nest as long as he cares to use it; but if deep snows are followed by an unprecedented rise of water, he will probably be drowned out.

“The silhouette of that quiet beaver stood out like a watchman against the evening twilight.”

Such observation seems remarkable in a mere beast; but what shall we say of the beaver’s dam, of his transportation canal, of his channels scooped out of the bottom of a shallow pond, and of other works that deal intelligently with land or water levels? All these seem to call for eyes as well as instinct; and it is no more remarkable that a beaver should know, sitting on top of his lodge, that he is above or below a visible mark than that he should run a winding canal half a mile, as he often does, and keep the water level right at every point.

Even the simplest of the beaver’s works, his felling of trees, seems to indicate a measure of observation. When he cuts a leaning tree he always gnaws first and deepest on the leaning side, to which the tree will fall. But if the tree is straight up and down, like a clever cat’s tail, he cannot judge its inclination, and often makes a mistake, throwing the tree to the wrong side or “lodging” it against another tree, as the best woodsman may do now and then. When a beaver tackles such a doubtful tree, he gnaws evenly around the whole butt, sinking the cut deepest in the middle, shaping it like an hourglass. As he works, he often stops cutting to look aloft, raising himself with forepaws against the trunk or sitting erect at a little distance, studying the tree with unblinking eyes as if to learn for his own safety which way it intends to go. One who has ever seen an old beaver thus sitting up on his tail, apparently to get the slant of a towering poplar before he fells it, has no difficulty in accepting the notion that the same beaver will recognize high-water mark when it lies directly under his nose.