212 WATCHED BY WILD ANIMALS 
I had glimpses of the beavers’ eager digging 
through the clear spots in the ice. They tore 
the root-filled section to pieces and devoured 
all that it contained. But not until the fol- 
lowing summer, when the broken dam released 
the water, did I realize how deeply and com- 
pletely the bottom of the pond had been stirred 
and ploughed. I have seen gardens uprooted by 
hogs, and mountain meadows dug to pieces by 
grizzly bears, but neither of them equalled this. 
The supply of roots ran out and the bark of 
the green aspens was eaten off, and still this 
mountain region was white with winter and the 
pond locked and sealed with ice. Beavers are 
strict vegetarians. There were trout in the 
pond, but these were not caught; nor were the 
bodies of the starved ones eaten, as sometimes 
occurs among other animals. The beavers must 
escape from their now foodless prison or perish. 
Spring examinations which I made indicated 
that they had tried to escape through the long 
tunnel which had been made to obtain the as- 
pens, but this had nearly filled with ice. They 
had then driven several feet of a new tunnel, 
but evidently found they could not accomplish 
it through the frozen, gravelly earth. Beavers 
are engineers—the handling of earth in building 
dams or in the making of canals is as much in 
their line as tree felling—but cutting and tun- 
