Three Against the Wilderness

by Eric Collier

  The sensitive guard hairs of a beaver’s dense fur are the instrument that detects the presence of any major leak in the dam. No need for him to waddle along its top, relying upon eyesight or ear to inform him of a weakness somewhere. The slightest pull of water escaping in one place registers against the tips of his fur as the beaver makes the patrol, and should any such leak exist, within seconds he goes about the business of sealing it tight.

  The feed bed lay in a clump of willows in two feet of water, a half-dozen feet out from the edge of the pond. I built a natural blind on the shore consisting of bundles of willows propped against an aspen that had lodged when the beavers felled it. And then I drove two stakes in the muck and wired a rail to them, thus making the observation bench.

  And if the wind was coming toward us, we squatted down on the bench in the even light, stifling the desire for a cigarette as we sat waiting patiently and expectantly in the blind. Of course no beaver would come to the table if cigarette smoke hung on the air, nor would one come if the wind carried our scent to them. Once in a great while they came when there was still light in the sky, but usually all was in shadow when the incoming wavelet on the otherwise smooth surface of the water warned us we’d better sit very still, and be cautious even in our breathing.

  The wavelets widened and in a moment or so a beaver came gliding silently through the water, to crouch down on the feed bed with decidedly humped back. First he must rid his guard hairs of the water that clung to them, a ritual speedily accomplished by a vigorous shake of the body. Then the fur was combed fastidiously down in place, the long nails of his webbed hind foot sufficing for a comb.

  Now he was ready for whatever might be on the feed bed, and always there was food there. If a litter of aspen or willow already peeled of their bark floated in the water around the feed bed, there was always one stick there, sometimes willow but usually aspen, with sufficient bark left on it to furnish any beaver an appetizer for the more trenchant meal to come. The stick was gripped firmly in his front paws, and like a squirrel shucking a pine cone the beaver’s teeth soon cleaned it of all bark. The peeled wood was them sometimes dropped on the feed bed, but more often tossed away into the water, at some later date to be floated downstream and perhaps become a part of the dam.

  That stick attended to, the beaver slipped quietly into the water and with a few swift strokes swam out of sight. But not for long. Soon the telltale wavelets again warned us to sit tight and still, and behind the wavelets came the beaver. Now there was a two-foot length of aspen fast in his teeth, though where the stick had been cut we hadn’t the least idea. We had heard no crash of a falling tree and could only surmise that the stick was part of one already felled.

  Now the feed bed was again stocked with a food supply, and for the next ten or fifteen minutes the rhythmic castanet sound of teeth informed us that the beaver was really hungry. Finally, his belly was filled, and dropping what was left of the food on the feed bed—there was always some left—he moved off through the water.

  So dark was it now that wavelets were almost lapping at our feet before another beaver moved in on the feed bed. This time the ripples were not quite so strong as before; a smaller beaver was coming, the female for sure. She too hoisted out of the water onto the feed bed, shook the water from her fur and then proceeded to comb it. She too completed the job of peeling the stick left behind by the male, eating its last shred of bark. And she too slipped away from the table to return a minute or so later with a fresh stick of food. And though now it was so dark that we could scarcely see the outlines of her body, we could still hear her teeth clicking as she gnawed the bark from the wood. Then she was gone, with only the far-off squawk of some roosting mallard to denote that life was still there in the pond.

  I got up from the bench, kicking the cramp from my legs. But Lillian sat there a little while longer, looking toward the feed bed she could no longer see. Veasy wasn’t with us tonight. He’d stayed home with a book that evening and kept a fire in the stove, and water boiling in the kettle for us. We never knew how long we might have to sit in the hide before the beavers came, and some nights they never came at all. Even in summer it got a bit chilly sitting there on the bench, the sun gone for the day, stars winking down at us, and hoot owls muttering in the spruces. A hot cup of coffee went down very well when we got back to the cabin.

  I waited a moment for Lillian, then said a bit impatiently, “No sense in you sitting there any longer.”

  She got up, stretched her legs and said musingly, “I was just thinking about something.”

  It was so dark I could scarcely see her face. “About what?”

  “The feed bed. They always leave food on it for the next beaver, don’t they?”

  “Always,” I said.

  Together we started for the cabin. We were about at the door when Lillian suddenly asked, “Why aren’t people like that?”

  I stood with wrinkled forehead and eyes to the ground for several seconds before replying, “I guess that beavers do instinctively what mankind must learn to do eventually. It seems a contradiction that a humble animal like the beaver can follow the golden rule while man can’t. People, Lillian, are just different from beavers—and that’s the pity.”

  Chapter 20

  It seemed as fantastic as it did ridiculous: destroy a beaver dam with dynamite after waiting ten long years for the beavers that had built it? It was crazy! Coyotes, timber wolves, cougars and other natural enemies of the beavers, yes, it was a foregone conclusion that we would have to wage continual warfare against them, but never for a fleeting moment had it occurred to me that we’d be compelled to dynamite a dam. Yet there was the dynamite, tied behind our saddles, fuse and caps too. And a loon out there on the water, flexing a wing and chuckling as loons sometimes do chuckle, at the seeming absurdity of it all.

  At two years of age a female beaver seldom gives birth to more than two kits, usually only one. At three she might have from two to three in the litter, but not until reaching full maturity at four or five does she become really prolific in her breeding. Quintuplets born to beavers of six years of age and up are the rule rather than the exception.

  But with only two pairs to begin with, beavers multiply slowly. Not until four years following the liberation of our original two pairs on Meldrum Creek was the creek able to boast a half-dozen active colonies along it, or some thirty-six beavers. From that point on the increase was far swifter.

  Conservation of any wildlife resource is not without its problems, and where beavers were concerned we certainly were not lacking in ours. There was the problem of the beavers who would not vacate their pond even though they had hacked down every deciduous shrub within a sixty-yard radius of the water. Then they began cutting conifers, a wood as foreign to the diet of a beaver as aspen bark to man. It was as plain as the water in the pond that if this state of affairs continued in the colony, its occupants might become diseased, and the disease would spread to other colonies. Downstream a few hundred yards was Meldrum Lake, verdant stands of aspen and willow crowding its shoreline, yet not boasting a single colony of beavers in its entire four-mile length. Yet for reasons that were known only to themselves, the obstinate tenants of the pond a short distance away from this land of milk and honey refused to move downstream. Finally we decided that we ourselves would assume full responsibility for providing the colony with a proper food supply.

  There were plenty of aspens among the conifers a quarter of a mile back from the water, but this food supply was beyond safe reach of the beavers. If they ventured that far from water they would most likely fall prey to a marauding wolf, coyote or bear. But this food could be snaked through the conifers and to the edge of the pond at the horn of a saddle, and once that idea took root in our minds we made twice-weekly trips to the colony, cutting down some fifteen or twenty aspens and snaking them in to the pond.

  This experiment in beaver culture lasted all of two months, and it seemed that the more food we were willing to drag into
them, the greater became the appetite of the beavers. Once I revisited the pond twenty-four hours after the usual supply of food had been hauled down to it. Every tree was peeled of its last square inch of bark, every limb cut off and taken into the water.

  Enough is enough. This comedy of errors had gone on too long. Trying to keep those beavers in food was like pouring water into a sieve. My eyes wandered thoughtfully to the dam, which was about ninety feet long, six feet high and broad enough on top for one to drive a four-horse freight team over it if the sticks and other debris would support the weight of the horses—which very probably it would.

  A dark and deadly idea began shaping in my mind. Without that dam, there would be no pond, and without the pond, the beavers would have to move! Maybe here was a solution to the matter, one that would do the beavers no harm, but instead would actually benefit them.

  The next day, saying nothing to Lillian of our intent for fear she’d voice womanly objections, Veasy and I rode back to the pond, sticks of blasting powder, caps and fuses tied behind our saddles. Eight round holes were punched in the top of the dam and eight sticks of powder, complete with fuse and caps, inserted into them. To allow us plenty of time to gain the protection of some stout tree when the fuses were ignited, each fuse was cut an inch longer than the last, all eight being timed to explode simultaneously, but giving us about two minutes to get the heck and gone away from the dam when the explosion took place.

  Kicking a sliver of pitch wood from a rotten log, I lighted it and moved along the dam, touching its flame to the fuses. When all eight were spitting out sparks I raced for the tree where Veasy was already crouching. For a couple of pent-up minutes we hugged the tree trunk, squelching the urge to peer around it and see what was happening at the dam. Then, like the sudden firing of a twelve-inch cannon, the detonation came. Water plumed high into the air to spank down again on the pond a hundred yards from the dam. A shower of sticks, mud and rocks shot high above the treetops, some of the rocks returning to earth perilously close to our hiding place. Then all sound was blotted out by the roar of water spewing out of the pond.

  After the powder smoke had lifted a little we came out from behind the tree to inspect the result of our work. A gap twelve feet wide and at least six feet deep had been blown out of the dam, and through this gap the pond was making its getaway.

  “Guess that’ll take care of the situation,” I confidently told Veasy. “Now they’ll follow the water downstream and maybe resettle in Meldrum Lake.”

  “Think so?” said Veasy noncommittally.

  I glanced sharply at him. “Don’t you?”

  He considered a moment before replying, “Beavers built the dam in the first place, didn’t they?” And when I made no retort he went on, “Maybe instead of moving out they’ll stay and plug up the dam again.” Veasy took nothing for granted.

  Three days later we returned to the scene, and I for one went back with the firm conviction that every beaver in the colony would now be elsewhere. But as we neared the dam site, all seemed far too still. Why no sound of running water? All could not have drained out of the pond in such short time. Then the dam was in sight and when fifty yards away from it I sat on a rock, shaking my head. The impossible had happened. The gap in the dam was a gap no longer. The beavers had completely filled it up again.

  That taught us a lesson. It taught us that it is a waste of powder and time to try and eject beavers from their own selected homesite by blowing up their dam. If the colony looking after it is an “active” one—if it has from four to six beavers in it—the dam will be repaired almost as fast as it can be blown out.

  “What now?” asked Veasy, trying to smother a laugh.

  “Just a minute, boy,” I said sheepishly. “Let me have a bit of time to figure things out.”

  For twenty minutes I never moved, sitting there with my cheek in my hand, thinking it all over. Then, slapping my thigh, I heaved up and announced, “We’ll bell trap them, that’s what we’ll do. If they won’t go peacefully we’ll eject them by force.”

  The following afternoon saw us back at the pond, each leading a pack horse, each horse toting three ten-gallon kerosene drums into which small latch doors had been built. One of the horses also toted a small tent and blankets and provisions, and tied behind the saddles of the two horses we were riding were a half-dozen traps and three small horse bells. The jaws of each trap had been heavily bandaged with canvas wrappings.

  We pitched the tent well back in the timber, a hundred and fifty yards from water, where our scent wouldn’t carry to the sensitive noses of the beavers. The horses were staked on picket ropes at a pothole meadow a half-mile away. We ate supper, ruminated over the campfire for a few minutes, then moved down to the water and set the traps.

  The ends of the trap chains were fastened to stakes driven solidly into the ground, and the slack in the chain tied to a slender willow with a horse bell fastened to its top. As soon as a beaver got into a trap his first jump back into the water would result in the instant ringing of the bell. And there is no noise quite so jarring as the sudden jangle of a horse bell on the hush of a wilderness night.

  There was still a little light left when the pounding of clapper against bell galvanized us into action. Veasy hefted the pitchfork, which recently had boasted three tines but now had only the two outer ones. I hoisted a kerosene drum on my shoulder, and we cut through the trees to the pond, the furious din of the horse bell guiding us straight to the trapped beaver. It was a huge beaver, too, that threshed water at the end of the trap chain, an old male weighing close to seventy pounds. Heaving gently on the trap chain, I skidded him up onto dry land. Veasy made quick use of the fork, holding the thick neck of the beaver down with the tines and pressing its head firmly against the ground in such a position that its teeth could do us no harm. Bearing down on the trap springs, I eased the beaver’s foot free of the jaws. We had made a good job of bandaging the traps; they had left no mark on the beaver’s foot at all.

  The kerosene drum stood on end at my side, makeshift door open. I took a deep breath, then signalled Veasy, “Okay.” And as the pitchfork tines relinquished their hold on the beaver’s neck, I took a firm two-handed grip on his flat scaly tail and with one sudden heave deposited him in the drum and quickly closed the door.

  By midnight each of the six drums had a prisoner. I kicked the camp-fire coals ablaze and brewed a cup of coffee. I sat over the fire, sipping the coffee, ears perked for a quick splash of water, which would denote that there were still beavers left in the pond. Thrice I heard the far-off lament of a timber wolf. A half-dozen horned owls held noisy convention in the treetops across the pond. A moose suddenly belched from within a stunted acre of second-growth pine. But noises such as these can be heard almost any night in the wilderness if one cares to sit sleepily over a camp-fire listening for them. But there was no splash of a beaver’s tail against water, and as the first light of dawn brought grayness to the woods, I crawled into the blankets for a couple of hours of sleep.

  Though slightly cramped of limb, the six beavers were little the worse off for their confinement when some dozen miles to the south, and six hours later, they were tipped out of the kerosene drums on the shingle of a fair-sized landlocked lake that not only had a plentiful supply of beaver fare along its banks, but also bore slight but certain evidence that nearly a century ago there had actually been beavers there.

  One by one the “catch” was released from the cages, and one by one the beavers sniffed suspiciously at the air before waddling into the water. And there we left them, free once more to shift for themselves, and reloading the drums on the pack horses we returned to our camp and reset our traps.

  That night the bells rang but twice, and within a few moments of their ringing two more woefully puzzled beavers were shut in the drums, to be liberated several hours later with the remainder of the colony. It was impossible to determine how many stayed in the lake, but when we revisited it a week later a good-sized lodge had been
built, and some fifty or sixty aspens lay across the shoreline, all trimmed of their branches. Some had stayed.

  According to British law, a man is innocent until proved guilty of the crime with which he is charged. No man can rightfully point the finger of accusation at his fellow man and proclaim, “That man is a murderer” before all evidence has been examined and a jury has rendered its verdict.

  Thus it was with the coyotes. If we had suspicion that they were indeed killing some of our beavers, suspicion was no excuse for our adjudging them guilty and passing sentence upon them. First we must have evidence beyond shadow of doubt. And it took me most of one summer to collect that evidence. For three months, wherever I travelled the game trails, my eyes were alert for any coyote scat (manure) deposited on them. The scats were carefully examined for the evidence I must have before rendering verdict. And there was no lack of evidence. An analysis of some ninety-six coyote scats revealed that twenty-seven of those coyotes had recently gorged themselves on a fare of domestic veal. It is an acknowledged fact among cattle ranchers that coyotes do kill the occasional calf. Fifteen scats told of mule deer that had been slaughtered. Five were composed of moose hair, though in this case it is likely that the coyotes had been helping themselves to the leftovers of a moose killed by timber wolves. Coyotes are too cowardly to tackle a moose themselves. The feathered content of some eleven scats confirmed that the head of many a mallard and other duck was being chopped off by the coyotes. Seventeen scats were composed mostly of legitimate fare such as squirrels, mice and snowshoe rabbits. It was the content of the remaining twenty-one that gave us the evidence we sought. Each of these contained the well-digested remnants of beaver flesh, mixed with scraps of the furry hide. That clinched the case. A suspect had been found guilty beyond all measure of reasonable doubt; but executing a sentence was a different matter indeed.