Wood-folk comedies

by William J. Long

In his journeying from place to place, likewise, Hamoosabik invariably follows the watercourses. His objective may be only a mile away in a direct line; but to reach it he will travel five or ten times that distance, making his way down one brook or river and up another to the pond he is seeking. If a brook is shallow, the beavers hurry over it, leaving only a few tracks to mark their passing; but if they intend to use the brook again, either for gathering building material or as a trail between their new home and the colony from which they came, they deepen the channel here and there by dam or excavation. And commonly at such places there is a hidden burrow, with entrance under water, in which the beavers may take refuge if surprised by their enemies.

These emergency burrows, which Hamoosabik prepares beside a regular trail or near the site of his lodge, always start from the bottom of the pond or stream, and slant upward to a spot under a tree’s roots, above high-water level. There he excavates a rough den, a little den if he has only a mate to consider, or a big den if he has brought a family with him. Finding such a refuge with its secret approach, one is reminded of New England pioneers, who built hiding places in their chimneys or cellars as a precaution against Indian attack.

When Hamoosabik needs deeper water for storing his winter food, he makes a pond by damming the stream below his lodge; but if he finds plentiful food near a natural lake having depth enough for safety, he uses that lake just as it is, thus avoiding the difficult job of building a dam. If he makes a pond that proves too shallow for his need or too slow in filling (the latter occurs frequently in dry weather), instead of running the risk of being frozen in before he is ready for winter he will dig channels in the bottom of his pond, and so provide the needed depth of water in another way. For winter lodging he must have a solid structure of two rooms, lower entrance hall and upper living room, with a stairway between;[3] but when he occasionally builds a house for summer use he is content with a simpler shack, as if it were not worth while to build solidly for a few weeks of pleasant weather.

The walls of a summer house are lightly constructed of grass and mud, over which a few weathered sticks may be thrown for the apparent purpose of concealment. The interior is a single large room, with a floor that either slants upward from the front or water side or else is arranged in two distinct levels or benches. The slanting floor is the work of a young pair of beavers, as a rule; the two-bench arrangement indicates that the lodge is used by more experienced builders. From the lower bench a passage through the wall opens directly on the air, at the brink of the stream; from the upper bench a hidden tunnel leads down through the bank, and emerges in deep water.

One curious fact about these summer houses is that a beaver always enters by the open door, and always comes out by the subaqueous tunnel. One can understand why he should enter by the door, because he stops just within to let water drain from his outer coat before climbing to his dry nest. The tunnel goes direct to the sleeping bench; if he entered by that route, he must drag a lot of water into his bed. But that Hamoosabik should refuse to go out of his open door appears as an oddity, until by long watching you become acquainted with his cautious habits. Thus, if you surprise him outside his summer house, he will not enter it (showing you where it is) so long as you remain in the neighborhood, but will hide in one of his refuge burrows. And if you surprise him at home, he will make an unseen exit under your very eyes. This is the method of it, when you watch from your canoe in the summer twilight:

During the day the family sleep in their nests of grass on the upper bench, all but one old beaver, who is on guard near the entrance; for that open door of the summer house (a winter lodge has no opening in the walls) may invite an intruder or an enemy. As the shadows deepen into dusk, and waters fill with soft colors of the afterglow, the watchman bestirs himself for his night’s work; but still he is careful not to show himself at the open door. Instead of making the easy and obvious exit, he climbs the sleeping bench, slips down through the tunnel, and lifts eyes and ears among the shadows under the bank, where he cannot be seen. After watching there awhile, he sinks without a sound and swims away under water. You are watching the lodge keenly when your eye catches a ripple breaking the reflection of sky and sleeping woods, or your ear hears a low call, like the flutter of a dry leaf in the wind. There is your beaver, at last, not where you looked for him at the door of his lodge, but far away on the other side of your canoe!

Again, as showing the beaver’s grasp of a natural situation, when he finds a wild meadow with a stream meandering through it, and decides to use it for winter quarters, his work is so simple as to appear like play. That meadow was once, undoubtedly, the bed of a beaver pond; it became a meadow because of rich soil which the stream brought down in flood, year after year, filling the pond and giving wild grasses a chance to root and blossom there. The beaver may not know this ancient history, that the perfect place he selects was made perfect by an ancestor who pioneered this region long ago; but he does know, or soon finds out, that water, soil, food-wood, building material,—everything is precisely suited to his needs. After locating his grove of poplar, he goes down to the foot of the meadow and builds a dam across the stream. Since he is careful to pick the best spot for building, the chances are that he will place the dam where his unknown ancestor placed it; if you dig beneath the new structure, you will find the solid foundation of the old. As the water flows back, being checked in its onward course by the dam, the grasses slowly disappear until their heads are covered, and presently the meadow is a beaver pond once more. Then without hurry or anxiety a goodly store of food is gathered, a lodge rises on the shore, and the family have all things ready before winter comes and the ice locks them in.

It is a different story when Hamoosabik settles in a new place, which no beaver ever used before, and then you see what pioneer stuff is in him. What with building his dam (always a troublesome element in a new place), or getting the right level to his pond or the proper height to his lodge, or running safety burrows and transportation canal through soil that may show rocks or clay where he expected easy digging, our little settler is up to his ears in work, and faces a new problem every evening. He is still working and planning, adding a last stick to the food pile or putting a spillway on the dam, which already gives him more water than he needs, when as he rises from his tunnel on a nipping night he bumps his head against the top of his pond, and knows that he is frozen in. Then, seeing he has done all a beaver can do, he settles down with pioneer courage to face the winter, the lazy winter, when from dawn to dusk he will be sociable with his family, and from dusk to dawn they will all sleep without fear in their warm living room.

What a curious life they live for six long months every year! By night the lodge and tunnel must be places of almost absolute darkness; yet even after nightfall, should the need arise, beavers go to every part of their pond and return, finding their way without seeing, I think, by their unerring sense of locality. By day a little light filters through the walls of the lodge, enough to make the gloom visible, and then the beavers use their eyes once more,—wonderful eyes, which adapt themselves alternately to thick darkness and the blinding glare of sunlight on pure snow.

No sooner does the sun rise than beavers, young and old, are all stirring eagerly, cleaning their house, exploring the pond under the ice for a relish of lily roots, bringing in their daily fare of bark, and finally, when hunger and need of exercise are satisfied, gathering in the big living room for an hour of sociability. At such a time, if you approach softly from leeward and lay your ear to the lodge, you may hear a low, rapidly whispered thup-a, thup-a, thup-a, thup-a, which is made by the vibration of a beaver’s lips when he is surprised or pleased. There is a moment of silence after the call, then a babel of voices, squeaky or whining or bumbling voices, as if little and big beavers were talking all at once.