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 forepaw. 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 
