In fact, a fair number of trees felled by beavers get hung up in adjacent trees and remain more or less upright. Early writings about the beaver insisted that the tail was used as a trowel. This is not so. It is the front paws that are used to plaster mud on dams and lodges. The actual feats of the beaver are impressive enough that legends are not necessary.
Beavers are wonderful builders and what they build depends on where they live.
Their best-known structure, the beaver dam, is only built by beavers that need to enlarge the underwater habitat that will be open to them in winter, by creating a pond deep enough that it will not freeze to the bottom. Deep water, whether or not it is due to a beaver dam, provides storage for winter food and a year-round underwater access to the lodge or den secure from predators. Increasing the area of ponds through damming and additional downstream impoundments provides safer access to additional food supplies. The beaver begins the dam by laying sticks and rocks in the stream bed about where the noise of moving water is greatest. Some sticks are embedded butt first in the bottom mud to serve as anchor prongs in the mud.