Beading

“ At the dam the sound of falling water grows faint as the break is rapidly closed. The houses loom larger. Over the dome of the one broken, the dark outline of a beaver passes triumphantly. Quick work that. You grow more interested; you stretch your neck to see—splash! A beaver gliding past has seen you. As he dives he gives the water a sharp blow with his broad tail, the danger signal of the beavers, and a startling one in the dead stillness. There is a sound as of a stick being plunged end first into the water; a few eddies go running about the pool, breaking up the moon's reflection ”

“ All creatures that live in the water are provided with oily fur, or smooth scales, that no water can penetrate; and water-birds, such as ducks and geese, have a little bag of oil, with which they dress their feathers."
"Are there any beavers in England, nurse?" asked Lady Mary. ”

“ Hunter. A Trapper is a beaver hunter. Those who hunt beavers and other animals, for any of the fur companies, are called Trappers; but such as hunt for themselves take the name of Freemen.
Austin. Yes, I shall remember. Please to tell us how they hunt the beavers.
Hunter. Beavers build themselves houses on the banks of creeks or small rivers, with mud, sticks, and stones, and afterwards cover them over with a coat of mud, which becomes very hard. These houses are five or six feet thick at the top; and in one house four old beavers, and six or eight young ones, often live together. ”

“ No sooner does the sun rise than beavers, young and old, are all stirring eagerly, cleaning their [280] 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. ”

“ Beaver push mud and stones from bed of river with front feet to make dam, and when build house walk up straight on hind feet, and hold to breast sticks and stones with front feet. No one hunt beaver who tell such stories. ”

“ Building Homes.—A beaver in captivity, says Chambers's Journal, will build a dam across the kitchen, making it of sticks and brushes, with a charming air of doing the best he can. The nest-building of birds has also a delightful air of contrivance about it. One likes them for the marvels they do with bits of grass and rag and wool. There is human nest-building too; but, considering their resources, the birds are before us in the beauty and utility of their work; while in contrivance the beaver in the story leaves us nowhere. Our house-building corresponds to the nest-building of the birds. ”

“ In some deep and still corner of the river, the beavers use such skill in the construction of their habitations, that not a drop of water can penetrate, or the force of storms shake them; nor do they fear any violence but that of mankind, nor even that, unless well armed. ”

“ So you see the beaver had planned his work well and the frost and the wind had helped him. He had harnessed the stream to do his work, and made its water protect him from his enemies. Just as men built their castles in days of old, the beaver had made his dam, so that a moat should surround his house, where the drawbridge should always be up, and the only way of entrance or exit should be by water. ”

“ The tail of the beaver is adjusted by nature to the mud he needs to cement his dam; his tooth is already adjusted to the hardness of the tree, so that he cuts it down by instinct and without thought. The eagle finds the air already under his wings when he would fly, and his talons already prepared to hold his food, or to grasp a limb in the forest. The fish finds itself in the beginning of its existence in an element ready to respond to its fins, and in the presence of food adapted to its life. ”

“ But even young beavers will sometimes grow tired of play, and at last they all lay down on the grass in the warm, quiet sunshine of the autumn afternoon. The wind had gone to sleep, the pond glittered like steel in its bed of grassy beaver-meadow, the friendly woods stood guard all around, the enemy was far away, and it was a very good time for five furry little babies to take a nap. ”

“ A plunge down the hole at the centre of the lodge, and a dark form would shoot out at the bank of the river. Perhaps a beaver's head, dripping with water would be poked up, only a few feet from the mud house, or maybe they would go the entire width of the pond before coming to the surface, for they are great swimmers, and can stay down for several minutes without coming to the surface to breathe. ”

“ A single blow of the tail of the watching beaver upon the water will cause every other of his fellows to plump into the water and disappear. To carry earth to their dam they place it upon their broad, flat tails and draw it to the spot. ”

“ With hind feet webbed up to the claws, and his broad tail as a rudder, the beaver has so much swimming power that his fore legs are free to carry and place the wood, while his broad orange-coloured teeth, as sharp as chisels, which grow as fast as he wears them away, are his cutting instruments. ”

“ When he reaches his hunting-grounds, he follows up the creeks and streams, vigilantly looking out for “sign.” If he observes a cotton-wood tree lying prone, he examines it to discover if its fall be the work of the beaver; and, if so, whether “thrown” for the purpose of food, or to dam the stream, and raise the water to a level with its burrow. The track of the beaver on the mud or sand under the bank is also examined ”

“ So soon as a beaver raises its nose on the surface of the pond, it smells the castoreum on the twig, swims up to convince itself whether it emanates from a stranger, and while going on land steps on the trap, which closes and catches its forefeet. It darts away with the trap into deep water, and wrestles furiously with the torturing iron, for which reason a beaver thus captured is never found to have sound teeth—till, quite exhausted, it tries to rise to the surface to breathe. ”

“ To be a successful trapper, required great caution as well as a perfect knowledge of the habits of the animal. The residence of the beaver was often discovered by seeing bits of green wood, and gnawed branches of the bass-wood, slippery elm, and sycamore, their favorite food, floating on the water, or lodged on the shores of the stream below, as well as by their tracks or foot-marks. ”

“ The tame beaver which builds its dam of chairs and umbrellas across the parlor floor, does it only once. The hen which cackles distractedly when her first brood of ducklings takes to the water trots calmly off to the pond with her third or fourth. ”

“ A young beaver will catch a limb by one end in his teeth, and, throwing it over his shoulder in the attitude of a puppy racing with a rope or a rag, make off to the pond. Once in the water, he throws up his head and swims to the house or the dam with the limb held trailing out over his back. ”

“ Some were quietly at work spreading a coat of mud on the outside of each house. This would freeze and defy the tooth and claw of the hungriest or the strongest predaceous enemy. Four beavers were leisurely lengthening and repairing a dam. A few worked singly, but most of them were in groups. All worked quietly and with apparent deliberation, but all were in motion, so that it was a busy scene. “To work like a beaver!” What a stirring exhibition of beaver industry and forethought I viewed from my boulder-pile! ”

“ The beavers, and the kingfishers, and the ospreys, of course, know everything that goes on along the rivers. Nothing can pass upstream or down without going by the beaver-dams, and the beavers are always on the watch. You might linger about a beaver-dam all day, and except for the smell, which a man would not notice, you would not believe there was a beaver near. But they are watching you from the cracks and holes in their homes, and in the evening, if they are not afraid of you, you will be astonished to see twenty or thirty beavers come out to play about what you thought was an empty house. ”

“ Talk about beavers to-night brought out a most interesting story by Tail-Feathers-Coming-over-the-Hill. Said he: “Beavers build a great dam, often working moons and moons to complete it. Then, when it is finished, and a great pond created, they build their lodges in the backed-up water, and cut their winter supply of cottonwood, willow, and quaking aspen, which they tow out in convenient lengths and sink in deep water around the lodges. ”

“ They sleep in their houses, with their bodies in the water, and their heads resting out of the water on a stick. At twilight, a wise old mother beaver comes out and swims all around the pond or river, looking and smelling. ”

“ Beavers build their houses, or “lodges,” under the banks of rivers and lakes, and always select those of such depth of water that there is no danger of their being frozen to the bottom; when such cannot be found, and they are compelled to build in small rivulets of insufficient depth, these clever little creatures dam up the waters until they are deep enough. ”

“ We may establish fairly intimate relations with the creatures of the wood and be admitted to some sort of brotherhood with them if we conduct ourselves becomingly. The timid grouse will acknowledge the caress of our bamboo with an arching of the neck, and the beaver will bring for our inspection his freight of willow or alder, and will at times swim confidently between our legs when we are wading in deep water. ”

“ Such hermits are happy fellows, lucky above the majority of beavers, who have no sunlit playground in winter; but they enjoy themselves circumspectly, knowing the danger of being caught in the open. At the slightest alarm, the faint click of snowshoes or a breath of your scent drifting downwind, every beaver disappears under the ice, giving the danger signal by slapping his broad tail on the water as he goes down; and when you hear them again they will be creeping into the living room of the lodge. Rap the roof sharply, after approaching on silent feet, and you hear plop! plop! plop! ”

“ The colour of its coat resembles so nearly that of the rocks, that an inexperienced eye would see nothing but bare stones and sticks where a practised hunter would see numbers of Beden, conspicuous by their beautifully curved horns.
The agility of the Beden is extraordinary. Loving the highest and most craggy parts of the mountain ridge, it flings itself from spot to spot with a recklessness that startles one who has not been accustomed to the animal, and the wonderful certainty of its foot. ”

“ You may perhaps wonder how the two beavers contrived to do so much work, but they knew beforehand just what they wished to accomplish, and they had tools well adapted to their uses. Their sharp teeth were their saws and axes, wherewith to cut down the trees, and strip them of their bark, while their paws and their broad, flat tails served for hoes and trowels, to dig up the mud, and spread it for mortar. *
* Some say the beavers never use their tails for trowels. ”

“ When there is nothing else to do, the beaver apparently comes into the pond a few times each day for a swim. In the midst of swimming he rises at times to the under surface of the ice and, with his nose against it, exhales a quantity of air. ”

“ In their natural state beavers live chiefly on the bark of shrubs and trees such as birch, alder, poplar, willow, while a favorite article of food is the root and stem of the yellow water-lily. In captivity they eat bread and raw vegetables, and while they greatly enjoy water for a bath or a swim, they will learn to content themselves without it. It is a pity that any web-footed creature should be held in captivity, where it cannot be provided with an abundance of its natural and favorite element. ”

“ Not only this, but this wonderful builder is shrewd enough to cut down trees with its strong, chisel-like teeth. It selects those near the stream bank, and is sufficiently skilled in woodcraft to make the tree fall toward the stream, by cutting into it most deeply on the water-ward side.
The beaver works almost entirely at night; but whether [Pg 173] under the direction of some one skilled beaver architect, or whether like the ants and bees, [52] all work guided by a common instinct that produces harmonious labor, is not known.
Quite as wonderful as the dam building is the canal making. ”

“ During summer they secure their stock of food by gnawing down hundreds of trees, the trunks or limbs of which are sunk and fastened in some peculiar manner to the bottom of the stream. During the winter when the beaver feels hungry, he dives down, brings up one of the logs, drags it to a suitable spot and nibbles off the bark. ”

“ I think some of the books say that the beaver can cut down a tree so that it will fall exactly where they want it to lie, just as a lumber-man in the woods will fell a tree where he wants it to lie. They say that when the beaver want to build a new dam they look along the stream until they find a place where there is a tree of just the right length, and then they fell it across the stream for a foundation for their dam. ”

“ During these manœuvres the flapping of their many thousand wings causes a reverberation suggestive of distant thunder. When at last settled upon the ground, they industriously search among the fallen leaves for the acorns and the beech-mast, the rear flocks continually rising, passing over the main body, and realighting. ”