The beavers lodge

Sometimes beavers live in holes in river banks, but mostly they build large "lodges" in the middle of a stream or pond. A lodge is made of logs and branches, weighted down and tightly plastered together with stones and mud. It usually has several underwater entrances and an emergency escape hole, but the main part is a large circular room, most of it above water level, in which twenty or more beavers live. If the water is not deep enough to protect the entrances to their home, the beavers deepen it by damming up the stream.

With their huge sharp front teeth they fell trees, gnawing their way through their bases so neatly that the wood looks as if it had been cut with chisels. If the tree is too heavy, or to far from the water for the beaver to drag it, he will dig a special canal up to it and float it out. Choosing his site carefully, the beaver fixes his logs so that they cannot be washed away, wedging them securely between roots and weighting them down with stones and mud. Sometimes the finished dam is a giant structure that raises the water level many feet.

Whole stretches of the Canadian countryside have been altered by the work of beavers. Not all the trees felled by beavers are used in making dams or houses. Many of them are sunk to the bottom of the water, near the house, where they can be reached in winter by swimming under the ice. These form a reserve of building material and of food, for the beaver's chief food is the soft bark of trees like willows, poplars, birches, and alders, as well as water plants. Beavers are very shy animals, hard to see at work; as soon as they sense danger they dive below water, hitting the surface a loud smack with their tails as a warning to other beavers. Beaver fur is very valuable. At one time their furs were used as money, for they were the most important furs of the great fur trade that opened up large parts of North America.

For nearly four hundred years they have been hunted so mercilessly that now they have to be protected, or they would be wiped out, as they have been over most of Europe. Beaver fur is used chiefly in making coats, but one hundred years ago it was more often made into hats.