Bismarck daily tribune. [volume] (Bismarck, Dakota [N.D.]) 1881-1916, 1909-02-02
WORK OF THE BEAVER
Feats Performed by This Indus.
u. trious Little Worker.
4 CLEVER HOUSE BUILDER.

4 CLEVER HOUSE BUILDER.
He 10 Capable Of Constructing = Dwell
Ing a. Large, Though Not So High,
~ q Small Haystack, and He Can
Cut Down Big Trees With His Teeth.
J., Almost every one knows something
about the beaver and that it builds
dams and houses to dwell in, but very
few people have seen beavers In their
wild state. 1t Is also fact that the
race Of Industrious little workers is
rapidly disappearing. In the older dis
tricts beavers generally live in the
banks of the streams they inhabit, and
the sight Of beaver house is uncom-
mon.
Where beavers do build houses, says
Forest and Stream, the structures DIFF
fer greatly In size, shape and location.
Some are as large, though of course
less high, than a small haystack; 9TH
ers are hardly more than six feet
through at the base. They may stand
either wholly on land or partly In the
water and partly on the bank or Who'll
~ In the water.
They are never placed In very deep
water, for base must be built for the
house to stand on reaching up to the
surface, since the chamber Inhabited
by the occupants must be dry.
The shape of those houses on the
shore approaches the conical. Those in
the water are more irregular, some
times only rounded, at others long and
rather fiat on top.
Within each house and connected
with the water by concealed passage
through which the beavers pass to and
fro Is the chamber which is the ami
mails dwelling place.
It is large enough to contain seven or
eight Of them and high enough so that
q beaver can conveniently sit up on his
launches. It is warm, dry and clean,
for the beaver is extremely neat in all
his habits.
The food Of the beaver consists
chiefly of the green bark of twigs and
young limbs of various trees. Cotton
wood bark is preferred; then comes
willow. then alder, but the bark Of
almost any tree may be eaten.
I have known them to eat pine and
white cedar. The beaver often cuts
down trees Of very considerable size to
get at the smaller limbs, which they
eat.
i have seen cottonWoods twenty
inches in diameter so cut, and once on
Vancouver island found cedar two
and one-half feet through which they
had gnawed down.
The work Of cutting down a large
tree is done by a single animal. 1
have seen the beaver engaged in the
operation, which is as follows: The
beaver sits up on his launches facing
the tree and with its fore paws rest
ing against it. With its head turned
on one side he cuts groove above
and then one below and bites out the
chin, taking it of In almost the same
way an axman would.
he thus saves himself the trouble
Of gnawing all the wood up into fine
cuttings. When the tree Is felled the
whole community attack and cut up
the tender limbs, carrying them away
to the cache.
Unlike many Of our gnawing ami
mails, the beaver does not sleep through
the winter. He remains active, often
venturing abroad during the whole Of
the cold weather. He must, therefore,
have food, and large part Of the
summer. aud autumn Is devoted to Sc
curing this food and depositing It In
caches. This food consists Of the
limbs and twigs Of the trees most pre-
ferred by the beaver.
They are cut from one and half
to three feet long, stripped Of their
leaves and smaller twigs, carried to
the water and foated to the cache,
where they are sunk. And here comes
q very curious point.
These sticks are foated to the cache
and are sunk by the beaver to the bot
tom Of the water, where they remain
without any apparent anchorage. They
are not stuck in the mud of the bot
tom or held down by weights. If
you lift one to the surface it will
doat, but you may move it about on
the bottom without its rising.
I have myself tried this with sticks
from which the bark has been eaten.
but have never done SO with the green,
unpeeled limbs before the beavers had
taken them into their houses. This
matter to me is very mysterious one,
and have never been able to get any
hint as to how these sticks were sunk.
All through the winter the beavers
visit these caches, carry the sticks to
their houses, where they eat of the
bark, returning the bare sticks to the
water. e.
Sometimes it may happen that for
some reason or other the cache may
not contain enough to last the whole
winter. In this case the beavers. II
possible. get on land through some air
hole or piece Of open water and then
forage among the timber. Occasional
" combination Of scarcity and severe
weather may oblige the colony to emf
crate during the winter to some moro
favorable spot.