by P. K. Tyler
“Seal off the HQ,” the major muttered, and reached for her radio. “Infirmary, Dr. Inman inbound.”
About the Author
Brent Meske lives, teaches, writes, photoshops, raises a young one, and keeps a happy wife near the border separating North Korea from South. He can often be found in his own dimension, daydreaming about Illiyria in his free minutes. Look for the first novel in the series, iii- invasion, coming soon.
Feel free to fly over to his website or drop him an email
brentmeske.com
[email protected]
Swim with the Beavers
by Robert Allen Lupton
Summary: A raging river washes a young boy from of his pioneer family's wagon and the waters carry him downstream to be rescued by an unusual foster family. Do they save him or does he save them? Perhaps, they save each other.
My first view of Castor National Wildlife Refuge was from the air. The helicopter circled the ranger’s cabin in the wilderness and made its approach to land. The refuge consisted of a large pond created by a beaver dam on a large creek. There were several hundred acres of virgin forest surrounding the pond in every direction. I could see the tops of aspen, alder, and cottonwood trees among the pines and firs that dominated the forest. Willow trees drooped over the edge of the pond.
The pilot continued his approach by skimming over the pond. Cattails, lilies, and other water flora speckled the glistening surface. The ducks and geese squawked to protest our passage and scrambled madly into the air.
A ranger standing in front of the cabin shielded his eyes from the sun as he watched our approach. The pilot put us gently on the ground, killed the engine, and removed his headset.
“Let’s hurry, Don, I’ve only got about thirty minutes’ turnaround time. We need to get your supplies unloaded and I need to get back in the air.”
We climbed down from the aircraft, automatically keeping our heads lower than we needed to in order to avoid the slowing helicopter rotors. The ranger approached, and I stepped forward to meet him.
“Hi, I’m Donald Blaine. Call me, Don.”
“Gary Davis,” he said. “Glad to have you here. Let’s get the plane unloaded. Jim is a great pilot, but he’s a real crybaby when you mess with his schedule.”
Jim made a rude gesture to Don and helped unload the supplies and my duffel bags from the plane. He made a quick run to the bushes and washed his hands at the pump outside the cabin. He shivered and said, “Damn, I always forget how cold this water is. So, Gary, I’ll be back in a month with the next supply run. I guess this is your last month here. Don, if there is anything you want me to bring next month, use the satellite phone to let me know.”
After the helicopter left, Gary said, “We need to get the supplies inside and secured. The raccoons will be in the food if we don’t. What the raccoons don’t eat, the bears will. I’ll show you where the storage lockers are.”
It took about an hour to get everything put away.
There were three benches on the front porch. I took the glass of sun tea he offered and we sat in the shade of the cabin. “How long have you been here, Gary?”
“Ten years. When my wife died, I needed to be by myself. You know, the Forest Service has a couple dozens of these small refuges in inaccessible locations around the country. This one is not even on any list. It’s a secret, but you know that.”
“Yeah, they made me sign a non-disclosure agreement when I took this assignment. I only signed up for a year. You’ve been here for ten years?”
“I’ve always felt like this is where I belong. The only people I see are the supply pilots. My bosses came with him three times. I expect they wanted to be sure that I hadn’t gone completely native. Every time I got a new boss, I got a visit. Our last boss, Mrs. Wilkins, seemed happy that I wasn’t running around barefoot in a loincloth. You have to keep up the rituals of daily life or you will go crazy. Shave, wash your clothes, wash yourself, and wear your uniform.”
“Shave and take showers?”
“You bet. The Forest Service put in a solar system right before I took this assignment. You don’t get television, but you can get television and movie recordings delivered with the supplies. You don’t have internet, but if you’d wanted internet, you wouldn’t have taken this job. The solar electric system will give you lights at night, make sure you have hot water, and power the electric appliances. There’s no air conditioning; you don’t need it this far north. There’s no heat, either. I have enough wood chopped and cured to get you through the first winter. I always told myself, if you want to be warm every day, you have to chop some wood every day.”
We stayed quiet for a moment and watched the birds returning to the pond. The ducks fly the last few seconds parallel to the water and take some ragged steps as they walk on top of the water until they finally settle on the surface. Geese, swans, and cranes land the same way on water. “I’ve never seen this many waterfowl on one pond.”
“This is a large, active beaver pond. It’s been here a long time. A healthy beaver pond is attractive to migratory waterfowl. You will have birds all year, but they’ll change with the seasons. The beaver families keep up the dam and the pond. The birds enjoy the benefits without doing any of the work. I have minks and otters living here, too. They typically live upstream this time of year. The otters like to play and hunt in the running water above the dam. The mink tend to hunt on shore most of the time. During season, they’ll spend hours catching crawfish in the shallows and eating them.”
I finished my tea and he refilled my glass. “I didn’t know there were any secret refuges when I went to work for the Forest Service. Do you know why this is a secret refuge?
“You bet. There’s a ranger’s log inside the cabin. The first entry is in 1905. It’s by the first ranger assigned here. He started building what became this cabin. The first log entries are about how and why this refuge came to be. He tells it better than I ever could. I’ve been by myself too long to talk much. Let’s take a walk and I’ll show you around the refuge. You can read the log tonight and we’ll talk about it in the morning.”
The beaver dam was over a hundred feet long. That was big, but not the biggest. There’s a dam in Canada over a half mile wide. That’s wider than Hoover Dam. Several beavers were doing maintenance on the dam or gathering food. A large part of the forest was covered with new-growth timber. When beavers harvest the older trees, new shoots come up in the area newly open to sunlight. The new tender aspen and other trees are some of the beavers’ favorite foods.
The beavers I could see were all a pale brown, almost tan or beige in color. When the sunlight glinted off their wet fur just right, they appeared to have golden fur. The California Beaver was sometimes called the California Golden Beaver, but these weren’t California beavers. The American Beaver normally comes in colors from a black brown to a very light brown. These beavers had fur much paler than light brown. It had a distinctive yellow hue. I mentioned it to Gary.
“Yes, these are the most golden-colored beavers that I have ever seen. They’re larger than normal, too. The adult males weigh over one hundred pounds and can stand over three feet tall. The females are nearly that big. At least two hundred beavers live in this colony. The large size and light coloration gets reinforced with every generation. Like all beavers, this group is aggressively territorial. Interlopers are violently encouraged to leave.”
“Doesn’t the golden color make them easier for predators to see?”
“Probably, but a hundred-pound beaver is not easy prey. These guys outweigh everything in the area except bears. They’re bigger than a bobcat or a lynx. The owl or eagle that can carry off a beaver this size hasn’t been hatched. Beavers are great parents and protect their offspring very well. The young are guarded until they reach breeding age, two or three years old. This colony takes protection to a new level. See the sentries posted around the pond and the beaver lodge? One tail slap on the water and every beaver will be under water in seconds.
These boys even fight as a team. You know how big their teeth are? One of the big males could break your leg with one swipe of its tail. They won’t bother you if you don’t threaten their kits. I’ve watched them lure a mountain lion into the water. They climbed on top the lion’s head and held it under so that it drowned in a matter of seconds.”
“Sounds like you really like these beavers.”
“I named a bunch of them, but I’ll let you come up with your own names for them. The first ranger used to make up sayings ‘bout the golden beavers. I’ve amused myself over the years by continuing that tradition. The golden beaver waddles, but it does not run. The golden beaver watches, but he does not intervene. The golden beaver bites, but he does not chew. I know my sayings sound silly, but I like them. One you will want to remember is, ‘when the golden beaver sounds the alarm, look to your own safety’. You don’t want to fight off a bear, a lion, or even a pissed off bobcat.”
We laughed and hiked back to the cabin. After dinner, he gave me the logbook. I settled into the rustic chair, poured myself a scotch, and opened the book. The brittle pages were yellowed and the edges had crumbled. Someone had placed clear tape on the edges to keep them from crumbling any more. The ink had faded to a deep brown. The hand was quite legible. That night, I read the entry written by the first ranger. Gary and I talked about it the next day.
We talked about it every day until Gary left me alone at the refuge. During my years at the refuge, I copied every word in the first ranger’s log. What follows is what he wrote. I haven’t edited it or commented on it.
My name is Benjamin Castor. It is March 3, 1905. It is only fitting that I am the first Forest Ranger here in this national refuge created by Teddy Roosevelt and named after my family. Actually, it is named after my great-grandfather, Nathan Castor. This is the way my father told his grandfather’s story to me.
You learned about Paul Bunyan, Pecos Bill and Johnny Appleseed in school. You know their legends and their stories, but you don’t know the story of my grandfather, Nathan. Nathan and his parents had started west in a Conestoga wagon just before the War. Nathan was a blond-haired, blue-eyed three-year-old. His father, like all his family, was a loner. The family was headed west alone in their wagon. “I don’t need to pay no trail guide,” Nathan’s father said, “We just need to go west until we find the mountains.”
Unfortunately, along the way were rivers and streams to cross. The family had no experience in finding or making safe crossings. This shortcoming made fording every swollen creek an exercise in terror. During an attempted crossing of a stream that was just below flood stage, Nathan was washed out of the wagon and swept downstream. The family searched for a couple of days and then headed west toward the next dangerous river crossing.
Nathan struggled to keep his head above the rushing waters. He was able to grab a branch that he instinctively used as a flotation device. Unable to swim and too young to understand how to work toward either bank, Nathan just held the branch and rode the current until it deposited him, cold and exhausted, against the side of a pile of mud and sticks blocking one side of the stream. He lay there shivering until he cried himself to sleep.
While Nathan was riding the current, Chee, a female beaver, returned after a full day working with the rest of the colony to repair the damages that the rushing water was doing to their dam. She had fed well and her teats were heavy with milk. She needed to feed her kits. She swam down and entered the underwater passage to her living chamber. When she climbed onto the first level, the drying off level, she knew something was wrong. She didn’t hear the kits, who should be whining for food. There was light in the chamber, there shouldn’t be light. She hurried onto the higher nesting level. The top had been torn away and her kits were gone. She could smell bear. A bear had done this.
Chee climbed out of her chamber through the hole the bear had torn open. She looked and sniffed for the bear. It was gone. She could smell the bear and she could smell something else. It was a new animal, one she had never smelled before. She followed the scent along the top of the dam. She found Nathan plastered with mud and debris, lying halfway in the water.
She cautiously approached the creature. It woke up while she sniffed and it hugged her with both arms. Chee knew this was a child by its smell. She needed a child and she could tell that this child needed a mother. She rolled gently onto her back and offered the food that only a mother can provide. After the man-child finished nursing, Chee eventually taught him by trial and error to hold firmly to her fur. She pulled Nathan along the edge of the dam. She didn’t hesitate to dive when she came to the section outside of her chamber. Nathan automatically held his breath for the few seconds they were underwater.
She deposited him on the drying floor and climbed to join her mate, Snik, who was already repairing the damage caused by the bear. Snik knew the kits were gone. The mated pair acknowledged each other’s sense of loss and then got on with the business of repairing the chamber roof. The golden beaver is sad, but it does not grieve.
Snik and Chee used their noses to encourage Nathan to climb from the drying floor to the sleeping floor. Snik followed Chee’s lead and they accepted the young human into their lives.
Snik took charge of Nathan’s training. Nathan accompanied Snik on his daily rounds. There were trees to cut, lilies to be eaten and repairs to be made. They don’t say busy as a beaver for no reason. Nathan would hold on to Snik’s fur and Snik would carry him through the water.
Snik and Chee were excellent parents. Three-year-old Nathan weighed about thirty-five pounds. All of the adult beavers were over twice his size. The other beavers came to accept Nathan. They called him Tis-Chik, which means ‘no-tail’ if you speak beaver. My grandfather called himself Tis-Chik most of the time. At first, Tis-Chik traveled around the pond carried on the back of Snik. Little by little, he learned to swim for himself. He couldn’t swim like a beaver because he didn’t have a tail. He developed his own method of swimming. He kept his feet together and undulated them up and down. He used his arms in a three-quarters sideways motion. By the time he was five, he had beaver-like speed in the water. Tis-Chik could hold his breath for ten minutes or more. This wasn’t as long as a beaver could stay underwater, but it was amazing for a human of any age. His body strength was more than any civilized twelve-year-old. He was faster on land than on water and could outrun the fastest member of the colony.
He learned that he could eat lilies and cattails. Unlike the beavers, he needed meat. He taught himself to catch crawfish and minnows, which he devoured whole. He learned to catch fish by building small dams and waiting until the fish swam into the areas he had dammed up. He would quickly break the dam and then pick up the fish when the water drained out.
He never hunted waterfowls or the birds that lived in the trees around the pond. However, he would raid their nests for eggs on a regular basis. Waving a large stick overhead, he was a match for the most protective duck or goose. He discovered that he could climb trees. He could serve as guard for the colony or he could steal eggs from a bird’s nest. Frequently he climbed the trees just for fun. Like children everywhere, the young beavers played games like tag, king of the colony, and keep-away. Tis-Chik would snatch a choice aspen branch from an unsuspecting beaver and dash for the nearest tree. He would climb up just far enough to be out of reach and then torment his pursuer with a barrage of insults and small branches.
Whenever Chee saw him in a tree, she would scold him for his behavior. His mock apologies, accompanied by some tender choice bark stripped from the upper branches, were always accepted.
The language of the beavers is a collection of clicks, whistles, squeaks, barks and grunts. Inflections inaudible to the human ear give the same word many different meanings. Tis can mean no, nothing, never, or leave now, depending on how it is used. This was easy for Tis-Chik. However, beavers also communicate by slapping their tails on the water. Tis-Chik used cupped hands to mimic a tail slap. Two hard, fast slaps are the beaver danger wa
rning. Three slow slaps call for help to dismantle a fallen tree or to share a new found crop of water lilies. Grandfather thought three slow slaps meant, ‘good food—come and join me’.
The young beavers teased Nathan about his small teeth and lack of tail. He tried making a tail from birch bark. He shaped it carefully and tied it around his waist with vines he selected for that purpose. The birch bark tail looked good enough on land, but it was a problem in the water. The bark interfered with swimming. Once, it had even caught on a branch underneath the water. Tis-Chik almost drowned before he could free himself.
Beavers store food for the winter; they call winter the cold time. Like ants, squirrels, and even some mice, beavers harvest during the warm time and hide the food away for the winter. Beavers take young branches with new bark and embed them in the underwater mud. Perhaps this is the origin of the phrase “food bank.” During the winter, a hungry beaver swims from his chamber, bites off a branch, and carries it home to eat at his leisure.
The first cold time was the hardest for Tis-Chik. He couldn’t live on bark. He was able to catch fish occasionally. He would dig freshwater mussels out of the mud and break them open between two rocks that he kept on the drying floor. Chee would whistle her displeasure until he had cleaned every piece of broken shell from the chamber. She kept a neat house. Lord knows how she would have been if he had tracked a single broken shell into the sleeping room.
He became inured to the cold. Chee, Snik and their new twins spent most of their time sleeping during the cold time. Except when hunting food, Tis-Chik snuggled with them for warmth.
That first winter, he mastered the beaver language. He also learned of the dangers that faced beavers. He learned about bears, mountain lions, bobcats, and lynx. Snik explained that even a badger, a mink, or a weasel would take a kit left unprotected. Eagles, hawks, and owls were always looking for young beavers. The colony had to guard against these beaver killers.