CHAPTER XI 
Voice; Sicn Hears; Enemies; DISEASE; PARASITES; 
BEAVERS AND FisH; BEAVERS AND Brirp LIFE 
VOICE 
Different writers vary much in their descriptions of the 
beaver’s voice. Morgan says that the cry of a young beaver 
very closely resembles that of a child afew days old. Mills 
says that sometimes a strange, shrill whistle is given. Some- 
times, when alarmed a young beaver gives a shrill and 
frightened cry not unlike that of a lost human child. He 
has heard near a beaver house in early summer a subdued 
concert going on inside, a purring, rhythmic melody. He 
says that the beaver also has a love ditty, a rhythmic mur- 
mur and sigh, very appealing, and it seems strangely ele- 
mental as it floats across the beaver pond in the twilight. 
Dugmore likens the voice of the young to the muffled 
whining of very young babies. My assistant in 1921 said 
that the noise made by the yearling beavers when playing 
was like that of a young kitten, only sharper. Seton says 
that young beavers wail like a crying child; older ones hiss 
in menace or utter a querulous “‘churr.”’ 
In 1923, some companions who were watching the beavers 
with me in the Yellowstone Park, where we could hear the 
young in the lodge, were well agreed that the voice of the 
young in the lodge was most like the whimpering of young 
puppies, without any whining or squealing note. One 
gentleman compared it to the grunting of young pigs, ten 
to fourteen days old. None of these people could detect 
any resemblance to the cry of a human child. 
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