138 WATCHED BY WILD ANIMALS 



hind, he reared up and put forepaws against a 

 four-inch aspen. He took several bites into 

 the tree; then several inches higher as high as 

 he could reach he did more biting; after this 

 he split and bit out the space between these two 

 cuttings. He then repeated cutting above and 

 below and again followed by splitting out the 

 chip between roughly following the plan of 

 an axeman. 



Once he stopped to scratch; he rubbed his 

 back against the stump, and clawed at the itchy 

 spot with left fore paw. He ate a mouthful of 

 bark and resumed work. All the cutting had 

 been done from one side, and for the few final 

 bites he scraped a quantity of trash against the 

 stump and stood upon this so as to reach the 

 last bit to be cut off. He was two or three 

 minutes less than an hour in cutting off this 

 four-inch aspen, but aspen is of soft wood. He 

 galloped behind a pine until the aspen tumbled 

 over. Waddling back to it, he snipped off 

 several little limbs, a single bite for each. He 

 scratched his neck. Then he fell rapidly to 

 gnawing the trunk in two. But before this 

 was accomplished he took fright, perhaps from 

 my scent, and went full gallop like a fat cow 

 to the end of the canal and dived in with tail 

 whack and splash. 



During summer beavers eat their meals on 



