In Beaver World Part 4

In Jefferson Valley, Montana, not far from Three Forks, I enjoyed the examination of numerous beaver workings, and made measurements of the most interesting system of beaver ca.n.a.ls that I have ever seen. The beaver house for which these ca.n.a.ls did service was situated on the south bank of the river, about three feet above the summer level of the water and about two hundred feet north of the hilly edge of the valley. From the river a crescent-shaped ca.n.a.l, about thirty-five feet in length, had been dug halfway around the base of the house.

Connected with this was a basin for winter food; this was five feet deep and thirty-five feet in diameter. From this a ca.n.a.l extended southward two hundred and seven feet. One hundred and ten feet distant from the house was a boulder that was about ten feet in diameter. This was imbedded in about two feet of soil. Around this boulder the ca.n.a.l made a detour, and then resumed its comparatively straight line southward.

Over the greater portion of its length this ca.n.a.l was four feet wide, and at no point was it narrower than three feet. Its average depth was twenty-eight inches. For one hundred and forty-seven feet it ran through an approximately level stretch of the valley, and seepage filled it with water. A low, semi-circular dam, about fifty feet in length, crossed it at the one hundred and forty-seven-foot mark, and served to catch and run seepage water into it, and also to act as a wall across the ca.n.a.l to hold the water. The most southerly sixty feet of this ca.n.a.l on the edge of the foothills ran uphill, and was about four feet deep at the upper end, four feet higher than the end by the house. The dam across it was supplemented by a wall forty-eight feet further on. This wall was simply a short dam across the ca.n.a.l, in a part that was inclined, and plainly for the purpose of retaining water in the ca.n.a.l. The upper part of the ca.n.a.l was filled with water by a streamlet from off the slope. Apparently this ca.n.a.l was old, for there was growing on its banks near the house, a spruce tree, four inches in diameter, that had grown since the ca.n.a.l was made.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Beaver Colony on Jefferson River near Three Forks, Montana]

The wall or small dam which beaver build across ca.n.a.ls that are inclined represents an interesting phase of beaver development. That these walls are built for the purpose of retaining water in the ca.n.a.l appears certain. They are most numerous in ca.n.a.ls of steepest incline, though rarely less than twenty feet apart. I have not seen a wall in an almost dead-level ca.n.a.l, except it was there for the purpose of raising the height of the water. This wall or b.u.t.tress is after all but a dam, and like most dams it is built for the purpose of raising and maintaining the level of water.

Extending at right angles westward from the end of the old ca.n.a.l was a newer one of two hundred and twenty-one feet. A wall separated and united the two. One hundred and sixty feet of this new ca.n.a.l ran along the contour of a hill, approximately at a dead level. Then came a wall, and from this the last sixty-one feet extended southward up a shallow ravine. In this part there were two walls. The upper end of the sixty-one-foot extension was nine feet higher than the house, and four hundred and twenty-eight feet distant from it. The two-hundred-and-twenty-one-foot extension was from twenty-six to thirty-four inches wide, and averaged twenty-two inches deep. The entire new part was supplied with spring water, which the beaver had diverted from a ravine to the west and led by a seventy-foot ditch into the upper end of their ca.n.a.l. Thirty feet from the end of the ca.n.a.l were two burrows, evidently safe places into which the beaver could retreat in case of sudden attack from wolves or other foe.

There were two other of these burrows, one at the outer end of the old ca.n.a.l and the other alongside the boulder one hundred and ten feet from the house.

At the time I saw these ca.n.a.ls, the only trees near were those of an aspen grove which surrounded the extreme end. It was autumn, and on both tributary slopes by the end of the ca.n.a.l, aspens were being cut, dragged, and rolled down these slopes into the upper end of the ca.n.a.l, then floated through its waters, dragged over and across the walls, and at last piled up for winter food in the basin by the house. In all probability this long, large ca.n.a.l had been built a few yards at a time, being extended as the trees near-by were cut down and used.

Where beaver long inhabit a locality it is not uncommon for them to have two or three distinct and well-used trails from points on the water's edge which lead into neighboring groves or tree-clumps. These are the beaten tracks traveled by the beaver as they go forth from the water for food, and over which they drag their trees and saplings into the water. On steep slopes by the water these are called slides.

This name is also given to places in the dam over which beaver frequently pa.s.s in their outgoings and incomings. Commonly these trails avoid ridges and ground swells by keeping in the bottom of a ravine; logs are cut through and rolled out of the way, or a tunnel driven beneath; obstructions are removed, or a good way made round them. Their log roads compare favorably with the log roads of woodsmen who cut with steel instead of enamel.

In most old beaver colonies, where the character of the bottom of the pond permits it, there are two or more tunnels or subways beneath the floor of the princ.i.p.al pond. The main tunnel begins close to the foundation of the house, and penetrates the earth a foot or more beneath the water to a point on land a few feet beyond the sh.o.r.e-line.

If there are a number of small ponds in a colony that are separated by fingers of land, it is not uncommon for these bits of land to be penetrated by a thoroughfare tunnel. These tunnels through the separating bits of land enable the beaver to go from one pond to another without exposing themselves to dangers on land, and also offer an easy means of intercommunication between ponds when these are ice-covered. Pond subways also afford a place of refuge or a means of escape in case the house is destroyed, the dam broken, or the pond drained, or in case the pond should freeze to the bottom. Commonly these are full of water, but some are empty. On the Missouri and other rivers, where there are several feet of cut banks above the water, beaver commonly dug a steeply inclined tunnel from the river's edge to the top of a bank a few feet back.

Most of this tunnel work is hidden and remains unknown. A striking example was in the Spruce Tree Colony, elsewhere described. These colonists, apparently disgusted by having their ponds completely filled with sediment which came down as the result of a cloudburst, abandoned the old colony-site. A new site was selected on a moraine, only a short distance from the old one. Here in the sod a basin was scooped out, and a dam made with the excavated material. The waters from a spring which burst forth in the moraine, about two hundred yards up the slope and perhaps one hundred feet above, trickled down and in due time formed a pond. The following year this pond was enlarged, and another one built upon a terrace about one hundred feet up the slope. From year to year there were enlargements of the old pond and the building of new pondlets, until there were seven on the terraces of this moraine. These, together with the connecting slides and ca.n.a.ls, required more water than the spring supplied, especially in the autumn when the beaver were floating their winter supplies from pond to pond. Within the colony area, too, were many water-filled underground pa.s.sages or subway tunnels. One of these penetrated the turf beneath the willows for more than two hundred feet.

While watching the autumnal activities of this colony, as described in another chapter, I broke through the surface and plunged my leg into an underground channel or subway that was half filled with water.

Taking pains to trace this stream downward, I found that it emptied into the uppermost of the ponds along with the waters from a small spring. Then, tracing the channel upwards, I found that, about one hundred and forty feet distant from the uppermost pond, it connected with the waters of the brook on which the old colony formerly had a place. This tunnel over most of its course was about two feet beneath the surface, was fourteen inches in diameter, and ran beneath the roots of spruce trees. The water which the tunnel led from the brook plainly was being used to increase the supply needed in the ca.n.a.ls, ponds, and pools of the Spruce Tree Colony. The intake of this was in a tiny pond which the beaver had formed by a damlet across the brook.

That this increased supply of water was of great advantage to the busy and populous Spruce Tree Colony, there can be no doubt. Was this tunnel planned and made for this especial purpose, or was the increased water-supply of the colony the result of accident by the brook's breaking into this subway tunnel?

The ca.n.a.ls which beaver dig, the slides which they use, the trails which they clear and establish, conclusively show that these animals appreciate the importance of good waterways and good roads,--in other words, good transportation facilities.

The Primitive House

The Lily Lake beaver house, in which the old beaver spent the drouthy winter, was a large roughly rounded affair that measured twenty-two feet in diameter. It rose only four feet above the normal water-line.

This house had been three times altered and enlarged, and once raised in height. Its mud walls were heavily reinforced with polelike sticks, which were placed at the junctures of the enlargements. The one large room was more than twelve feet in diameter. Near the centre stood a support for the upper part of the house. This support was about one and a half by two and a half feet, and was composed for the most part of sticks. But few houses have this support; commonly the room is vaulted. The room itself averaged two and a half feet high. It had four entrances.

A house commonly has two entrances, but it may have only one or as many as five. Thus the way to the outer world from the inside of the house is through one or more inclined pa.s.sageways or tunnels. The upper opening of these entrances is in the floor a few inches above the water-level, and the lower opening in the bottom of the pond under about three feet of water. These extend at an angle through the solid foundation of the house, are about one foot in diameter and four to fifteen feet long, and are full of water almost to floor-level. This dark, windowless hut has no other entrance.

Most beaver houses stand in a pond, though a number are built on the sh.o.r.e and partly in the water, and still others on the bank a few feet away from the water. The external appearance and internal construction of the houses are in a general way the same, regardless of the situation or size. Most beaver houses appear conical. Measured on the water-line, they are commonly found to be slightly elliptical. The diameter on the water-line is from five to thirty-five feet, and the height above water is from three to seven feet.

A house may be built almost entirely of sticks, or of a few sticks with a larger proportion of mud and turf. In building, a small opening is left,--or built around and over,--which is afterwards enlarged into a room.

Houses that are built in a pond usually stand in three or four feet of water. The foundation is laid on the bottom of the pond, of the size intended for the house, and built up a solid ma.s.s to a few inches above water-level. This island-like foundation is covered with a crude hemisphere or dome-shaped house, the central portion of the foundation forming the floor of the low-vaulted room which is enclosed by the thick house-walls. In building the house the beaver provide a temporary support for the combined roof and walls by piling in the centre of the floor a two-foot mound of mud. Over this is placed a somewhat flattened tepee- or cone-shaped frame of sticks and small poles. These stand on the outer part of the foundation and lean inward with upper ends meeting against and above the temporary support. The beaver then cover this framework with two or three feet of mud, brush, and turf, and thus make the walls and the roof of the house. When the outer part of the house is completed, they dig an inclined pa.s.sageway, from the bottom of the pond up through the foundation, into the irregular s.p.a.ce left between the supporting pile of mud and the walls. And of this s.p.a.ce they shape a room, by clawing out the temporary support and gnawing off the intruding sticks. This represents the most highly developed type of beaver house.

In most houses the temporary support is not used, but a part of the wall is carried up to completion, and against it are leaned sticks, which rest upon the edge of the remaining foundation. A finished house of this kind has a slightly elliptical outline. However, many a house is a crude haphazard pile of material in which a room has been burrowed.

The room is from one to three feet high, and from three to twenty feet across. The room is a kind of a burrow and is without either door or window. Half-buried sticks make a comparatively dry floor, despite the fact that it is only a few inches above water-level. Beaver sleep on the floor, usually with tail bent along the side after the fashion of a dozing cat, in a nest of shredded wood, which they patiently make by thinly splitting and paring pieces of wood. Just why this kind of bedding is used cannot be said, but probably because this material dries more quickly, is more comfortable and more sanitary, and harbors fewer parasites. However, a few beds are made of gra.s.s, leaves, or moss.

But little earthy matter is used in the tip-top of the house, where the minute disjointed air-holes between the interlaced poles give the room scanty ventilation.

Except in a few cases where house-walls are overgrown with willows or gra.s.s, the erosive action of wind and water rapidly thins and weakens them. Hence the house must receive frequent repairs. Each autumn it is plastered or piled all over with sticks or mud. The mud covering varies in thickness from two to six inches. The mud for this purpose is usually dredged from the bottom of the pond close to the foundation of the house. It is carried up, a double handful at a time, the beaver waddling on his hind legs as he holds it with his fore paws against his breast. A half-dozen or more beaver may be carrying mud up at once. The covering not only thickens the walls and increases the warmth of the house, but also freezes and becomes an armor of stone that is impregnable to most beaver enemies. The "mudding" of the house is a part of the natural and necessary preparation for winter. It may also be a special means of protection deliberately carried out by the beaver. The fact that an occasional thick-walled or gra.s.s-covered beaver house was not thus plastered in autumn--perhaps because it did not need it--has led a few people to affirm that beaver houses are not mud-covered in the autumn. Many years of observation show that most beaver houses do receive an autumnal plastering, and the few that do not have this attention usually have thick, well-preserved walls and do not need it.

One autumn in Montana, of twenty-seven beaver houses which I examined, twenty-one received mud covering; three of the others were thickly overgrown with willows and two were gra.s.s-grown. Only one thin-walled house that needed reinforcement did not receive it; and this one, by the way, was broken into by a bear before the winter had got fairly under way.

[Ill.u.s.tration: AN UNPLASTERED AND A PLASTERED HOUSE]

In the autumn of 1910 I made notes concerning eighteen houses. These I watched during October and November. Thirteen were plastered; a willow-grown one and a weed-grown one, both of which had thick walls, were not plastered. The remaining three were not greatly in need of additional thickness, so received only a scanty covering of sticks.

Two of these were broken into by some animal during the winter, while none of the others were disturbed.

Beaver frequently show good judgment in that important matter of selecting a site for the house. Ice and sediment are two factors with which the beaver must constantly contend. In the pond the house is commonly placed in deep water, and apparently where the depth around it will not be rapidly reduced by the depositing of sediment. Keeping the house-entrance, the harvest-pile basin, and the ca.n.a.ls from filling with sediment is one of the difficult problems of beaver life.

To guard against the rapid encroachments of the deposits of sediment, one group of beaver, apparently with forethought, built a dam that formed a pond from the waters of a small spring which carried but little or no sediment. I have noticed a number of instances in which a pond was made on a small streamlet with greater labor than it would have required to form a pond in a near-by brook. As there were a number of other conditions favorable to the brook situation of the house, the only conclusion I could reach was that these selections for colony-sites were made with the intention of avoiding the ever-encroaching sediment,--for in some beaver ponds this sediment is deposited annually to the depth of several inches.

Ice is one of the troubles of beaver existence. It is of the utmost importance to the beaver that he should have his house so situated that the ice of winter does not close the entrance to it, and also that the deep water in which his pile of green provisions is deposited does not freeze solid and thus exclude him from the food-supply. The ice fills the pond from the top and compels him to be constantly vigilant to save himself from its encroachments. Many a beaver home has been built alongside a spring, around which the beaver dredged a deep hole and in this deposited the winter food-supply. The constant flow of the spring water prevented thick ice from forming, both around the food-pile and between it and the house-entrance.

Large numbers of beaver do not possess a house. Beaver who live without a dam or pond commonly do not build a house, but are content with a burrow or a number of burrows in the banks of the waters which they inhabit. In the severe struggle to live, there is a tendency on the part of the beaver to avoid the building of dams and houses, as these reveal their presence and put the aggressive trapper on their trail.

Many colonies have both houses and burrows. Apparently the houses were used in the winter-time, the burrows in summer. One beaver burrow which I examined was about one foot above the level of the pond and twelve feet distant from it. The entrance tunnels were sixteen feet in length, and began a trifle more than three feet under water near the edge of the pond. This burrow measured five and a half feet long, about half as wide, and seventeen inches high. It was immediately beneath the outspreading roots of an Engelmann spruce. The majority of beaver burrows are about two thirds the size of this one.

One November I examined more than a score of beaver colonies. There was no snow, but recent cold had covered the pond with ice and solidified the miry surroundings. Over the frozen surface I moved easily about and made many measurements. One of these colonies was a fairly typical one. The colony was on a swift-running stream that came down from the snowy heights, three miles distant. The top of Long's Peak and Mt. Meeker looked down upon the scene. The alt.i.tude of this colony was about nine thousand feet. The ponds were in part surrounded by semi-boggy willow flats, with here and there a high point or a stretch of bank that was covered with aspens. The tops of a few huge boulders thrust up through the water. All around stood guard a tall, dark forest of lodge-pole pines. These swept up the mountainside, where they were displaced by a growth of Engelmann spruce which reached up to timber-line on the heights above.

This colony had a number of ponds, with a few short ca.n.a.ls extending outward from them. A conical house of mud and slender poles stood in the larger pond. Above this pond there were half a dozen pondlets, the uppermost of which was formed across the brook by a semi-circular dam.

Over the outward ends of this dam the water flowed and was caught in other ponds; these in turn overflowed, the water traversing two other ponds, one below the other, just above the main one. Below the large pond were three smaller ones in close succession. The dam of each pond backed the water against the dam above it.

The dam of the main pond was two hundred and thirty feet long. Each end bent upward at a sharp angle and extended a number of yards upstream. This dam measured five feet at its highest point, but along the greater portion was only a trifle more than three feet high. The central part was overgrown with sedge and willows and appeared old; but the extreme ends appeared new, and probably had been in part constructed within a few weeks. The whole dam was formed of earth and slender poles. The pond formed by it was one hundred and eighty feet wide, and had an average length up and down stream of one hundred and ten feet. The average depth was only two feet.

Near the centre of this large pond stood the house, a trifle nearer to the dam than to the upper edge of the pond. I measured it on the water- or rather the ice-level. It took twenty-six feet of rope to go around it. The top of the house rose exactly five feet above the ice.

The house was built of a mixture of sods and willow sticks. The ends of the sticks here and there thrust out through the three-or-four-inch covering of mud which the house had recently received. Wondering how much of the house was in the water below the level of the ice, I thought to measure the depth by thrusting a pole through the ice to the bottom. Holding it in an upright position, I raised it and brought it down with all my strength. The pole went through the ice and so did I. The water was three feet deep. This depth covered only a small area around the house and was maintained by frequent digging. The house is often plastered with this dredged material. Altogether, then, the house from its lowest foundation on the bottom of the pond to the conical top was eight feet high. The foundation of this house was made of turf, ma.s.ses of gra.s.s roots, and a small percentage of mud thickly reinforced with numerous willow sticks. The floor was mostly sticks.

As the entrance tunnels were filled with water to a point about three inches below the floor-level, and as these were the only entrances or openings into the house, friend or foe could enter only by coming up through one or the other of these water-filled tunnels from the bottom of the pond.

The single, circular, dome-like room of this house was four and a half feet in diameter and about two feet in height. Its ceiling was roughly formed by a confused interlacing of sticks, which stood at an angle.

The s.p.a.ces between were filled with root-matted mud. The walls were a trifle more than two feet thick, except around the conical top. Here was a small s.p.a.ce, mostly of interlacing sticks, the thickness of which was but one foot. As very little mud had been used in this part, there were thus left a few tiny air-holes. As I approached, there could be seen arising from these holes the steamy and scented breath of the beaver inhabitants within. Since the ventilation of beaver houses is exceedingly poor, and as this animal probably does not suffer from tuberculosis, it is possible that ventilation is a.s.sisted, and some of the impure air absorbed by the water, which rises almost to the floor in the large entrance-holes.

The early trappers from time to time noted extended general movements or emigrations among beaver, which embraced an enormous area. They, as with human emigrants, probably were seeking a safer, better home. Some of these movements were upstream, others down; commonly away from civilization, but occasionally toward it. For this the Missouri River was the great highway. Limited emigrations of this kind still occasionally occur.

The annual migration is a different affair. This has been noted for some hundred and fifty years or more, and probably has gone on for centuries. This peculiar migration might be called a migratory outing.

In it all members of the colony appear to have taken part, leaving home in June, scattering as the season advanced. Rambles were made up and down stream, other beaver settlements visited, brief stays made at lakes, adventures had up shallow brooks, and daring journeys made on portages. The country was explored. The dangers and restrictions imposed during the last twenty-five years appear in some localities to have checked this movement, and in others to have stopped it completely. But in most colonies it still goes on, though probably not usually enjoyed by mothers and children except to a limited extent.

By the first of September all have returned to the home, or joined another colony or a.s.sembled at the place where a new colony is to be founded. This annual vacation probably sustained the health of the colonists; they got away from the parasites and the bad air of their houses. The outing was taken for the sheer joy of it. Incidentally, it brought beaver into new territory and acquainted them with desirable colony-sites and the route thereto,--useful information in case the colonists were compelled suddenly to abandon the old home.

It is natural for the beaver to be silent. In silence he becomes intimate with the elements, and, while listening, hears and understands all moods and movements that concern him. He is a master in translating sound. It wakens or warns, threatens or gladdens, and woos him back to slumberland.

On the wild frontier in his fortress island home in safety he sits and sleeps in darkness. He cannot see outside, but the ever-changing conditions of the surrounding outer world are revealed to him by continuous and varying sounds that penetrate the thick windowless walls of his house. He hears the cries of the coyote and the cougar, the call of moose, the wild and fleeting laugh of the kingfisher, the elemental melody of the ouzel, and many an echo faintly from afar. He hears the soft vibrations from the m.u.f.fled feet of enemies; and, above his head, the raking threat of claws upon the top of his house.

Endlessly the water slides and gently pours over the dam, and softly ebbs around the pond's primeval sh.o.r.es. The earthquake thunder warns of storm, the floods roar; then through day and night the cleared and calmed stream goes by. The wind booms among the baffling pines, and the broken and leafless tree falls with a crash! There is silence!

Along the stream's open way through the woods numberless breezes whisper and pause by the primitive house in the water.