Shaggycoat: The Biography of a Beaver

by Mrs. Molesworth

  CHAPTER IV

  HOW THE GREAT DAM WAS BUILT

  Shaggycoat, of course, had had no experience in dam-building, but he hadoften watched repairs upon the dam in the colony where he and hisgrandfather lived, before that terrible winter and the destruction oftheir snug city. He was too young at the time to be allowed to help insuch important work as strengthening the dam, which needed old and wiseheads, but there was no rule against his watching and seeing how it wasdone.

  He had planned to model his dam in the alder meadow after the one at theold colony.

  He had traveled many weary miles by lakes and rivers, to find a spotwhere such a dam could be built. A broad meadow surrounded byfoothills, with a narrow neck at the lower end where the dam was to be,and large trees near to use in its construction. There were many placeswhere the ordinary dams, made of short sections of logs, piled up like acob house, could be built. The brush and stone dam could also be madealmost anywhere, but the kind Shaggycoat wanted, which was easier tomake than any other could be built only in certain places, so he hadchosen the spot with great care.

  His observation of repairs on the old dam would stand him in good stead,but even had he not seen this work, it is probable that his beaver'sbuilding instinct would have supplied the needed knowledge. His kind hadbeen dam builders for ages.

  It was the beaver dams of the eighteenth century that gave us most ofour pleasant meadows, where hay and crops now grow so plentifully.Originally these lowlands were covered with timber, but the beaver damsoverflowed the valleys, and made them fertile. This also killed off thetimber, which finally rotted and fell into the water, and the meadow wascleared as effectually as though the settlers had done it with theiraxes. Traces of these dams may still be found.

  Just to illustrate how ingrained the building instinct is in the beaver:a young beaver was held in captivity in the third story of an apartmenthouse in London. There were no sticks, no mud, nor anything to suggestbuilding. He had no parents to teach him this industry, yet he soon setto work and built brushes, shoes, hassocks, and anything else movablethat he could get hold of into a wall across one corner of the room.This was his dam.

  One October evening, when the harvest moon was at its full and itsmellow radiance shimmered on tree-top and water, and the world was likea beautiful dream, half in light, half in shadow, Shaggycoat andBrighteyes took their places at the foot of one of the great pines atthe lower end of the meadow and the work of dam-building began. But justhow they set to work you could never guess, unless you are familiar withthe habits of these most interesting animals.

  They stood upon their hind legs, balancing themselves nicely upon theirbroad flat tails, and began nipping a ring about the tree. It was not avery deep cut, and looked for all the world like the girdle that thenurseryman makes upon his apple trees, only it was a little more ragged.When the tree had been circled, they began again about three inchesabove the first girdle, and cut another. When they touched noses againat the farther side of the tree, they began pulling out the chipsbetween the two girdles. When this operation had been completed for theentire circumference of the tree, they had made the first cut which wasabout three inches broad, and perhaps a half an inch deep, for they hadthe bark to help them, and this was the easiest cut on the tree.

  Do you imagine that they stopped for a frolic when the first cut hadbeen made, as many boys or girls would have done? Not a bit of it, forthey knew better than man could have told them how soon cold weatherwould make work upon the dam impossible, and there was the lodge tobuild after the dam had been made.

  You would have laughed if you had seen these two comparatively smallanimals at the foot of that giant pine, nipping away at it likepersistent little wood-choppers. The old tree was tall and majestic. Ithad withstood the winds of a century, and its heart was still stout. Thechips that they took were so small, and the task before them so great,but, if you had happened by the following day and seen the furrow, sometwo or three inches in depth, you would have marveled, and not been sosure of the old pine's ability to withstand these ambitious rodents.

  Night after night they worked, and once or twice they had to widen thecut, which had become so narrow that they could not get their heads into work, but, even as water wears away stone by constant action, theywore away the stout heart of the old pine.

  At last, one morning, just as the moon was setting and the pale starswere fading, a shudder ran through the tall pine and it quivered as theycut through the last fibres of its strong heart. A moment it totteredlike an old man upon his staff, then swayed, as though uncertain whichway to go, and fell with a rush of wind and a roar that resounded fromfoothill to foothill until the meadow echoed with the downfall of theold sentinel.

  It had fallen squarely across the stream, just as they had hoped. Thiswas probably not through any prowess of the beavers as woodsmen, butnearly all timber that grows upon the bank of a stream leans toward thewater, owing to the fact that trees grow more freely upon that side.

  The sun was now rising, so they left their work, well pleased that thetree was down, but by dusk they were at it again.

  The trunk of the pine, and particularly its thick foliage, had dammedthe water somewhat, so it was already beginning to set back, but most ofit trickled through and went upon its way rejoicing at its escape. Somelarge limbs upon the tree still held it several feet from the ground, sothey set to work on the under side of the tree, cutting off the limbsand lowering the trunk to just the height they wished. Some of thiswork had to be done under water, but that is no hardship for a beaver,for he can stay under several minutes. When breathing had becomedifficult they would come up, bringing the severed limbs in their teeth.These would be jammed into the mud just in front of the tree trunk, likethe pickets upon a fence. If you had tried to pull out one of theselimbs after they had once planted it, you would have found it adifficult task.

  In two nights they lowered the pine to the desired height, and made itlook like a dam.

  The following night, they began upon the other pine on the oppositebank, and girdled it as they had done the first. The tree looked lonelynow with its mate gone. Perhaps it felt so and did not care that thesharp teeth were nipping away at its bark, or maybe it still longed tobattle with the elements, and this spasmodic pain in its sap filled itwith forebodings.

  As relentlessly as they had gnawed away at the first tree, they workedat the second until it, too, fell with a rush of air, the snap ofbreaking branches and a thunderous thud that shook the valley. They werenot as fortunate this time as they had been before and though the pinefell across the stream, it fell further up than its mate, leaving a gapbetween them.

  You could never guess how they remedied this mishap. They certainlycould not move the tree, but that was really what they did, for theygnawed off the limbs that supported it on the down-stream side, and itrolled over of its own weight, so that in this way the gap was filled.The structure now looked quite like the outline of a dam.

  Then work upon it was suspended for a time and they went up-stream abouttwenty rods and dug three holes in a knoll that would soon be anisland, for the reason that the water was now setting back quiterapidly. These holes were started near the bank of the stream runningback under ground for several feet, and then turning upward and comingout at the surface. Three such holes were dug, each leading to adifferent place near the bank of the stream, but all coming out at thesame spot at the top of the knoll.

  They soon resumed work upon the dam and small trees and brush might havebeen seen floating down the stream, guided by industrious beavers, whogave the material a shove here and a push there to keep it in thecurrent. Now that the dam was beginning to flow the meadows, they wouldmake the stream do their carrying just as it did cargoes for man.

  The brush and saplings were stuck vertically in front of the pinebarricade, and the holes between were plastered up with mud and sods,until the structure was fairly tight. The mud they carried in their forepaws hugged up under the chin, or on the broad tail which
made a finetrowel with which to smooth it off.

  Little by little the holes on the dam were filled, until finally it wasquite smooth and symmetrical. It could be built larger and stronger thenext year, but for this year they only needed a small pond that shouldmake a primitive Venice for them, and shield their lodge from a landattack. By the time the first hard freeze came, the dam had beencompleted for that year, and the freeze strengthened it just as they hadintended.

  A beautiful little lake about a quarter of a mile in length, and half aswide, now shimmered and sparkled in the valley and the beavers were gladthat they had been so prospered.