The Tail Slapper 37 



and in Montreal was founded the famous Beaver Club, a 

 group of men in the fur trade whose initial requirement for 

 membership was that the applicant had wintered in the 

 Northwest. Oregon, in the early stages of its history, issued 

 coins bearing the picture of the fur bearer and called beaver 

 money. Indian folklore is full of stories in which the beaver 

 is represented as wise and powerful. 



I visited the area about the fallen tree every time I was 

 in the marsh. Most frequently I went in the morning but 

 whenever possible I tried to arrive in the evening as I knew 

 the beavers were largely nocturnal and, in places where they 

 might be disturbed, seldom ventured out in the daylight. 

 Though I did not see them I took encouragement in the fact 

 that here and there I saw evidence of their work— a cut 

 sapling, a few branches floating in the water, or a section of 

 small log which obviously had been towed along the canal. 

 I usually left the canoehouse with rather high hopes, but 

 when I had passed the sailboats and cruisers in the canal, 

 and had been waved at by the passengers on the excursion 

 boat which daily ran between Lake Washington and Puget 

 Sound, I would begin to ask myself how I could expect to 

 see a native of the wild in such completely urban surround- 

 ings. 



The more I looked for the animal the more it interested 

 me. This was the engineer that built dams across moving 

 streams and used the water thus impounded for its own 

 private lake where it would be safe from the attacks of most 

 predators and where it could easily transport its food to its 

 lodge. As a resident of a forest country I knew how much a 

 log pond saved a sawmill in the cost of handling its saw logs, 

 and I could see the great advantage which water transpor- 

 tation gave to animals that would otherwise have to tooth- 

 haul their food by sheer strength and over rough and often 

 hilly ground. This dam building was no occasional device 

 used by only the old and the wisest of the animals. In the 



