Part 12
The otter, also, unlike most of his weasel tribe, is a peaceable and highly interesting beast. He is a fisherman, a very expert fisherman, and finds plenty to eat without interfering with any other. So he is always in good condition, and as full of capers as a kitten. Most animals are fat and playful when they are young, growing lean and sober as they grow old; but an otter is just the opposite, having leanness and sobriety as his portion in infancy. As a kit he spends an uncommonly long time in his dark den; when he comes out he passes many an hour asleep in the water, where he lies comfortably on his back with nose in the air and paws folded on his chest. As he grows older he plays more, thickens up till he is in perfect condition, and ends by becoming the most sportive of all wild creatures. He makes one of the most affectionate of pets; and what with his constant good fare and good humor he has no more reason to quarrel with a beaver than with the man in the moon. Remember that there are no “savage” beasts except in our yards and our imagination; that the wild or natural animal does not fight unless he has a compelling motive, and not even then if he can avoid it. Why then, one must ask, do these two peaceable beasts fall upon each other whenever their trails cross?
[Illustration: “_He is a very expert fisherman, and finds plenty to eat without interfering with any other._”]
We know so little of an animal (the real animal which you meet in the woods, not the labeled skin-and-bones which you find in a book or a museum) that any answer must be guesswork, and the guess varies with the woodsman who makes it. When I put the question to a trapper I know, a silent, observant man who follows his solitary trap line every winter, he answered confidently that the otter carries a grudge around with him, and always begins the quarrel. An otter likes to have his fishing waters to himself; he is intolerant of trespassers, and in this he is like the loon, the kingfisher, the sheldrake, and other natural fishermen, all of whom seem to have definite portions of lake or river which they regard as their own.
Now the beaver is not a fisherman; but at times he interferes sadly with those who must follow that craft for a living. When he builds his dam on a trout stream, for example, it means an end of fishing in that neighborhood. The trout cannot stand his commotions, his towing of logs and alder brush, his perpetual digging of mud or roiling of water. So when an otter, coming to dine where he has caught many a good dinner, finds his favorite pool occupied or spoiled, he is in a mood to pick a bone with the offender. In a word, the otter fights because he has a grudge to settle, and the beaver fights to defend himself. Such is the trapper’s explanation.
When I asked Simmo the Indian about the matter, he said that beaver and otter both have grievances, and that when they meet unexpectedly (they avoid each other for the most part) one is quite as likely to begin hostilities as the other. An otter does not like a beaver because the latter may steal an otter kit and bring it up in his lodge as a drudge or slave. “Otter he _mitcheego_, very cross, ’cause beaver steal-um baby an’ make-um work,” was the way Simmo put it. The beaver is more _mitcheego_, because he often finds an otter monkeying with his dam or spillway. The dam is the danger-point in a beaver’s winter quarters. Any disturbance of it threatens calamity, and a break may be the herald of death; yet a roving otter can never pass a dam without raising a commotion, splashing about in a way to bring the whole beaver family rushing out of their lodge in wild alarm at the fancied danger.
Simmo is right in his facts, his observation of game or fur animals being microscopic in its accuracy; but whether he has the right explanation of the beaver-otter feud is another matter. It is true that occasionally you may find a young otter sharing the summer wanderings of a family of beaver, apparently content with the life and knowing no other. That he was brought up with the beaver kits is evident from his continued association with them; but whether the beavers stole him, as Simmo thinks; or whether he was left motherless and followed them, which is quite natural; or whether some mother beaver sought him out and suckled him, as many mother animals adopt a stranger when deprived of their young,--these are questions which no man can answer. One can observe with his eyes an otter in a beaver lodge; but only imagination can follow the trail by which he came there.
It is true also, on the other side of the feud, that the otter raises a terrible pother at a beaver dam in winter; but he does it unconsciously, I think, and for a natural reason. He is a lover of open water, and in summer he lives largely in the lakes and streams. In winter, the waters being sealed, he must wander over the vast, inhospitable expanse of ice, unable to enter his favorite pools save by some fortunate air hole. At such times he has the habit (which trappers know too well for his safety) of using every little runlet for his amusement. He may be hungry or on a journey or heading for a distant stream with a man on his trail; but he can never pass near a bit of open water without having a plunge in it. In trailing an otter I have repeatedly found where he went out of his way for no other purpose, apparently, than to play a moment in a spring or little brook that was clear of ice, after which he headed diagonally back to his former course and resumed his journey.
So it happens in winter, when an otter passes a beaver dam that has a run of water beneath it or through the spillway, that he always raises a whillilew there, splashing merrily about in the enjoyment of his own sensations. To the beaver, living in his lodge nearby, any sudden splashing of that kind means just one thing, and a fearful thing,--a break in the dam. In the autumn, or while waters are open, a broken dam is easily mended; but in midwinter even a small break may be hopeless, since the beavers cannot get through the ice of their pond to repair the damage. It means that the little opening will soon become a big opening with a flood pouring through it; that the precious store of food-wood will be frozen into a solid mass. Then the beaver family must die of starvation in their lodge, their tunnel and food pile being blocked by ice; or else, if perchance they can find or dig a way through the frozen pond, that they will probably be caught by wolves or lynxes when they forage in the snow-filled woods, where their short legs and heavy bodies make weary traveling.
One can understand, therefore, the beaver’s alarm at any disturbance of water in his spillway. Day after day he listens to its musical flow as to a quiet tune; when he falls asleep his ears drink in the melody as a sweet lullaby, telling him that all is well. Suddenly comes a pause, a break in the tune, and then a violent splashing. Down under the ice he comes, his family following at his heels, to go rushing up and down the length of the dam, peering about in the underwater gloom, trying to locate the danger. Remember that the beaver is on the upper or pond-side of the dam, while the splashing comes from the lower side, whither he cannot come because of the roof of ice over his head. And when, after much searching and tribulation, he learns that the alarm is needless, that the disturbance is caused by a careless otter amusing himself or monkeying with matters that may become dangerous--well, then he is as mad as anybody else would be; and he will remember his grievance when next he meets the cause of it.
Such is Simmo’s explanation of one little comedy of errors among the wood folk. A dog or an Indian never forgets an injury, and why should not a beaver be like a dog at least? So he reasons, and I cannot answer him. He knows more about wild animals than I shall ever learn.
I have a notion, however, that there may be a better reason for the standing quarrel, a reason suggested by one lucky find in a beaver lodge after I had searched for it many years. Briefly, the notion is (and it looks odd when one puts it in cold ink) that the otter sometimes makes mockery of the beaver’s housekeeping by leaving a smelly mess of fish in a lodge that is wonderfully clean, under the noses of animals that abominate all evil smells. To appreciate the humor of such an explanation we must know how the two animals live during the long northern winter.
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For five or six months every year, from November to April, the beaver is virtually a prisoner in his winter lodge. It is a small domicile, and as six or eight beavers may occupy the one, low living room, it is fortunate that they instinctively keep it very clean, and that the aroma of musk or castor fills it at all times with penetrating, antiseptic odors.
It is early autumn when a beaver family begins to think of the lodge as of a home; not an old home, but a new one, for Hamoosabik is strangely typical of America in that he is forever moving somewhere else or building a new house. All summer long the beavers lead a nomad life, wandering up or down the wilderness streams on endless exploration; but when nights have a warning chill, and days grow mellow as ripened fruit, then the heads of the family begin to look about for a place to spend the winter. There is nothing haphazard in the location; a beaver never settles on a place for winter quarters until by examination he is assured of three things: an ample food supply, a storehouse in which to keep it, and a dry lodge in which to live in comfort and security. Because he must have all these, with solitude or remoteness, you may search long in beaver land before you find where the animals have settled.
The first need of the family will be plenty of good food, and to secure that they explore the neighboring woods until they find a grove of poplars, of young poplars with tender bark. One might think that, having found their food, they would begin at once to cut and gather it; but such is not the beaver’s way. With him all things must be done not only decently, but in order. Before a beaver touches his selected trees, he examines the stream carefully to decide where he will put them; and when that matter is settled he will pick out a convenient spot for his house. As he intends to raise the water in the stream, which is too low for his purpose, and as rising water must overflow its banks, he commonly locates his house some distance back from the shore. Then, as he will be working here many days before his house is ready, or even begun, he proceeds quickly to dig three or four refuge burrows. And very cunning burrows they are, starting in hidden places near the bottom of the stream, slanting upward through the bank, and ending in a den under a tree’s roots above the flood level. He will sleep in these dens while preparing his permanent quarters; in winter he will use them as hiding places should he be driven out of his lodge.
The next important matter is a storehouse beyond reach of frost, and the only sure place for that is under water. The stream is shallow; it might easily be frozen to the bottom; but the beaver overcomes the difficulty by going downstream a little way and building a dam of logs, brush, stones and miscellaneous litter. The dam is intended to provide an artificial pond; the double object of the pond is to furnish a playground and a pool for storage, the one wide enough for winter exercise, the other deep enough to give assurance that ice can never form to the bottom of it and grip the food which is to be kept there. So we think, viewing the finished dam and seeing it serve its purpose; what the beaver thinks when he builds it, only a beaver might tell.
While the pond is filling slowly, Hamoosabik gathers his food-wood. First he fells a large number of trees by cutting around the butts with his teeth; then he trims the branches into convenient lengths, drags or rolls them to the nearest water, and floats them down to his storehouse, where he sinks them in a loose pile on the bottom. Green wood sinks easily, as a rule; if the beaver’s sticks have a tendency to bob up to the surface, where they would be frozen into the ice, he keeps them down by pressing one end into the mud. If he can use flowing water for transportation, he always does so; but he will not hesitate to tow his food-wood across a lake, if need be, or to dig a canal if his poplars stand some distance back from the water. He works by night for the most part, remaining hidden in one of his burrows by day. Any dull or rainy afternoon may bring him out; and should the weather turn severe, threatening to freeze his pond or canal before he is ready for winter, he will work day and night without rest. There will be time for sleeping when he has nothing else to do.
When the pile of food-wood grows to goodly size, and while younger members of the family are nightly adding to it, the old beavers prepare their winter lodge on the shore. Their first care, curiously enough, is for a cellarway or tunnel, which leads from the middle of the lodge ground down through the bank, and emerges at the bottom of the pond, convenient to the food pile.
Around the upper or land end of this tunnel they build their house, a solid structure from four to eight feet high, and six to twenty feet in diameter. The height depends on the expected rise of water in the spring, since one room at least must always be above high-water mark. The size varies with the number of occupants, a little lodge for a pair of beavers just starting housekeeping, and a big house for a large family. The latter usually consists of an old pair, with some “kit” beavers recently arrived in the wilderness, and half a dozen or more yearlings and two-year-olds. The materials of the lodge are brush, grass and mud, and the interior is arranged with a view to comfort and security. For safety against enemies the beavers depend on thick walls; for comfort two rooms are provided, a lower entrance hall and an upper living room, with an inclined passage or stairway between.[2]
Just over the tunnel, perhaps a foot above the level of the ground, is a small chamber which serves as the entrance hall and dining-room of the lodge. Here the beavers shake the water from their hairy outer coats when they emerge from the tunnel (the inner coat of fur is always dry), and here they eat their meals. The hard-packed floor of this hall invariably slants upward from the mouth of the tunnel, and the evident purpose is to allow the water to drain away more easily.
From one end of the hall a stairway, just big enough for a single beaver at a time, mounts through the middle of the lodge to the living room above. Sometimes this central passage is the guiding part of the building plan, the lodge being constructed around it; but quite as often the material is piled in a solid mass, and hall and stairway are then cut out from beneath, as a continuation of the tunnel from the pond. Around the top of the stairway, just under where the roof is to be, runs a circular bench or gallery, which is covered deep with dry grass or shredded wood. This bench forms the floor of the living room; on it each member of the family will have his separate nest, from which he can slip into the central opening and down the stairway without disturbing any other beaver.
The bench is then roofed over, making a circular room from four to eight feet in diameter, with an arched ceiling just high enough to enable a beaver to move around without bumping his head. A small ventilator is left among the poles that project through the roof, and the structure is covered to a thickness of two feet with grass, sods, and rushes, all mixed with mud from the pond bottom. This last is the beaver’s mortar, and the frost hardens it to his purpose.
Like most other buildings, whether of bird or beast or man, the completed house receives a final “touch,” and a very suggestive one; but whether Hamoosabik adds it consciously, with purpose of concealment, who can say? When the lodge is finished so far as comfort and safety are involved, the beaver throws over it a litter of weatherbeaten sticks, making it appear like a pile of drift stuff cast up by winds or high waters. With nights of sharp frost the lodge walls harden, becoming finally so granite-like that no enemy can break in, and the beaver himself cannot gnaw a way out. The only door left him is the opening in the middle of his living room, which leads down the stairway through hall and tunnel, and emerges under five or six feet of water at the bottom of the pond.
While all this building is going on, the ice forms thicker and thicker, and presently the beaver is locked in until waters are open once more, and returning birds are filling the silent woods with melody. Meanwhile he will spend the greater part of the time in his upper living room, and for exercise will pass a few pleasant hours every day in swimming about his pond with its roof of ice. Farther he cannot go, and even here his journeys must be short; since there is no air under the ice, he must return to his lodge or enter one of his refuge burrows every time he wants to breathe. When hungry he slips down through the tunnel to the food pile, takes a stick up to his hall, and there eats the bark to the last scrap. Then he carries the peeled stick back to the pond, where it is thrown aside with a growing multitude that have no more interest for the beaver family; unless, perchance, they use the pond another season. In that event the peeled sticks, no longer glistening white, but sodden brown, may be used to repair the dam or disguise the new lodge.
That the beaver wearies of his diet of water-soaked bark is evident from the fact that he explores every inch of his pond for roots of the yellow lily; from this also, that if you cut a hole in the ice and push in a pole of fresh willow or “popple” or moosewood, he will find it within the hour and carry it away. Should you hold the pole, keeping very still and throwing a blanket over the air hole to exclude the light, he will attempt to pull it out of your hand. And if you stick one end deep in the mud, leaving the upper end frozen fast in the ice, he will promptly cut it in two places, one just above the bottom, the other just below the ice, and so carry the pole away to his dining-room.
The only variation of this winter-existence comes when there is an open spring-hole in the pond or a bit of swift water at the inlet. The imprisoned beavers make glad use of such an opening, which they may have to reach by a long swim under the ice. They come every day to play in the free water or to sit erect beside it, sunning themselves by the hour on pleasant days, combing their fine fur meanwhile, or coaxing a snarl out of it, using for the latter purpose the peculiar split claw which every beaver carries on one of his hind toes.
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!_ as the beavers drop into their tunnel one after another. Go out on the ice now, and hammer it with your ax. If your ears are keen, you may hear a faint rumble or gurgling of water as some of the family return to their lodge, while others enter refuge burrows in the bank. So they are driven back and forth; but spare them any prolonged fright, for they are the most inoffensive little prisoners in the wilderness.
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Meanwhile Keeonekh the otter is a foot-loose creature, a rambler, an _erdstappa_ or earth-hitter, as our forbears called one with a gift for roaming. He has the whole wilderness for a hermitage; yet his world is only as big as he makes it. Like most wild creatures, he has definite limits beyond which he rarely passes, and then only when food fails in his familiar district. The waters are sealed, to be sure; but every large lake has an air hole or two, and swift streams offer plenty of open places. When fishing for his dinner Keeonekh holds close to one opening, coming out where he went in; but when on a journey he may enter one air hole and emerge at another so far away that you cannot see him. And this because he has learned the curious trick of breathing under the ice, where another animal must quickly drown.
That trick is simple enough, but few besides Keeonekh have mastered it. When he is far from an opening and must have fresh air, he presses up against the under surface of the ice and slowly expels his breath, which forms a great bubble around his nose. He leaves it there a moment, till it is purified by contact with water on one side and ice on the other; then he takes it back into his lungs and goes on refreshed. He may reach an opening on the next tack, where you hear him blow out his breath with a long _wheeeef_ of satisfaction; if not, he rises against the ice once more and repeats his extraordinary performance.