Beaver

BEAVER

Beaver Business

By O.A. Fitzgerald

The world's first dam builder is a shining example of industry, application, and good conduct.

The beaver is eager. But he's also modest, patient, persistent, frugal, and a dependable provider for his family. His only frivolity is a daily grooming of his very valuable coat.

Only man and his machines can face-lift a stream faster then the fur-coated engineer with the built-in diving suit. Whether he gets cussed or complimented for it depends upon where he does that face lifting.

For free, some western irrigation farmers get generous bonuses every summer from beaver ponds high up in the mountains. The bigger those ponds, the happier the farmers downstream. “Every one's worth a thousand dollars,” remarked the farmer.

Some mountain ponds have a mile of shoreline and contain many millions of gallons of water.

On the other hand, plugged ditches, flooded fields, washed-out roads, and trees across phone lines are some of the results of beaver eagerness close to civilization. In some logging districts bridge piling has to be coated with tin against beaver choppers.

Try discouraging a “nuisance beaver” and you'll learn the real meaning of perseverance. Tearing holes in his dam, even dynamiting it, is but a routine annoyance. One rancher hung out a lantern to annoy the night shift. It was chucked into the dam along with everything else the beaver could float or drag. A beaver never admits defeat. So he gets carted off to some lonely meadow where his swimming pool will not bother anyone.

This policy of resettling nuisance beavers is building up the population. Centuries of ruthless trapping have reduced our one-time hordes of nearly half a billion to pitiful thousands. Thanks to wise game-management, you now can find beaver workings on streams that haven't seen any since Indian days.

Locating a leak in his precious dam is a beaver specialty. There he has the super-sensitivity of a Geiger counter. When trappers learned this, they created leaks and set their traps by them. Beavers soon were dragging pieces of brush across those traps before repairing the leaks.

A beaver's choppers are so formidable that the Indians mounted them on handles for cutting tools. With short, powerful strokes, a beaver can chop down a tree in about the time it would take a man using a dull axe.

Around a ton of limbs goes into the underwater winter food cache for each adult. Aspen and poplar are favorites. Alder, maple, lodgepole pine come in next. A beaver will eat cedar and the firs, but he thinks they're spinach.

Because of his moated castle, little is known about beaver romancing. We do know the beaver is an exemplary family individual. A colony generally contains beavers of all ages. When a new batch comes along, it's a signal for the oldest children to move out, mate, and start dams, homes, and woodpiles on their own.

One honeymooning couple chopped more than a hundred trees and built a dam three feet high and several hundred feet long their first season of homemaking. Inside their new swimming hole, they built an underwater castle with a 450-cubic-foot living room.

So long as there are beavers in that pond, work will be done every day. Much of it will not be necessary, but when a fellow has his reputation to uphold he can't take time out to loaf.

IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO TELL YOUR OLD TIME TALES OF THE BEAVER OR SOME INTERESTING FACTS, PLEASE FEEL FREE TO EMAIL THEM TO borntobeoutdoors@gmail.com AND I WILL BE HAPPY TO INCLUDED THEM ON THE PAGE.