REBUILDING A BEAVER COLONY 131 



canal and the edge of the pond, the foundation 

 for a house was being excavated. Two tunnels 

 were made through it to the bottom of the pond. 



The house was made of mud dredged from 

 the bottom of the pond, and this was reen- 

 forced with an entire clump of willows cut near 

 by. There were also used willow roots, sods, 

 a few stones, and a few peeled aspen sticks off 

 which the beavers had eaten the bark, and 

 which they dragged from their temporary home 

 the old house. 



The finished house was about ten feet across 

 the bottom and five feet high. The walls were 

 about two feet thick. The ventilation top was 

 a mass of criss-crossed sticks without mud. 



Beavers do most of their work at night 

 this probably is for safety from men. It appears 

 that at one time they may have regularly worked 

 during the daytime. But for generations hunt- 

 ers with guns have made day work perilous. 

 In out-of-the-way places where they had not 

 been disturbed I have seen a whole colony at 

 work during the daytime even when the work 

 was not pressing. With exceptions they now 

 work daytime only in emergencies. At this 

 place no one was troubling the beavers and fre- 

 quently I saw an old one, and at length I realized 

 that it had been the same old one each time. 



I was sitting on the side of the beaver house 



