“The drouth [sic] continued and by mid-October the lake went entirely dry except in the canals. Off in one corner stood the beaver house, a tiny rounded and solitary hill in the miniature black plane of lake-bed. With one exception the beaver abandoned the site and moved on to other scenes. I know not where. One old beaver remained. Whether he did this through the fear of not being equal to the journey across the dry rocky ridge and down into Wind River, or whether from a deep love of the old home associations no one can say. but he remained and endeavored to make provisions for the oncoming winter. Close to the house he dug or enlarged a well that was about six feet in diameter and four feet in depth. Seepage filled this hole and into it he plunged a number of green aspen chunks and cuttings, a meagre food supply for the long cold winter that followed. Extreme cold began in early November and not until April was there a thaw.”
Enos Mills: In Beaver World
Uh-oh. Things do not look good for our hero. You know those national geographic programs with the elephants all huddled around the drying pond and then a one gets stuck in the mud and buzzards come? i’ve decided that there’s almost no program about elephants ever that doesn’t end badly and make me cry, so my new motto is “if it has a trunk I’m turning it off”. Will this beaver’s fate be similar? Animal observers and reporters are often torn between maintaining their impartiality and intervening. I wonder what the founder of the Colorado Rockies National Park will do?
Meanwhile the old beaver had a hard winter. The cold weather persisted and finally the well in which he had deposited winter food froze to the bottom. Even the entrance holes into the house were frozen shut. this ssealed him in. the old fellow whose teeth were worn and whose claws were bad, apparently tried in vain to break out.
What do you suppose happens next, as the impartial beaver observer watches to see whether the fierce winter will finish off this lone beaver? Death and starvation are natural things that occur in a beavers life, and I told you Mills was a less whimsical writer than some. Did he come back in the spring to find the withered bones of the beaver elder? Or did the grandpa disappear without a trace?
On returning from three month’s absence two friends and I investigated the old beaver’s condition. We broke through the frozen walls of the house and crawled in. The old fellow was still alive and greatly emaciated. for some time — I know not how long– he had susbsisted on the wood and the bark of some green sticks which had been built into an addition of the house during the autumn. We cut several green aspens into short lengths and threw them into the house. The broken hole was then close.d The old fellow accepted these cheerfully. For six weeks aspens were occasionally thrown to him, and at the end of this time the spring warmth had melted the deep snow. The water rose and filled the pond and unsealed the entrance to the house and again the old fellow emerged into the water. The following summer he was joined, or rejoined, by a number of other beavers.“
