374 FOUR-FOOTED AMERICANS 



neither live nor work in colonies. If our young do not 

 clioose mates the first season that they leave us, they 

 may come home that winter, but not again. Afterwards 

 they must join the wanderers and those Beavers who, 

 having lost their mates, refuse to take another. Thus our 

 lives go on, — hewing, storing, planning, building, and 

 repairing, unless trappers break up our peaceful homes. 



" ' I who tell this story live on Lost Creek, which runs 

 through protected land, where no trap may take me, and 

 I am fat, happy, and content. I have a mate who is a 

 clever tree chopper, and we are now building, raising 

 our dam a foot or so, and mending places Avhere our mis- 

 chievous cousins the Muskrats have poked holes ; some- 

 times they even try to share our lodges with us, like the 

 impudent rats they are. We must deepen , the water 

 around a new lodge that we shall finish to-morrow; its 

 roof poles are of poplars from the nearby bank, the sides 

 are braced \>y willow and poplar basketwork, and I have 

 beaten the mud covering hard and smooth witli my flat 

 tail. Our lodge has a broad entrance for wood also, where 

 the cuttings will not stick when carried in, and a large 

 dry room for my family of nine young and half-grown 

 Beavers who helped me Avith the work, thus learning 

 how to hew and build tlie lodges some of them will have 

 to make for themselves next season. 



" ' Yet in spite of all this work of mine, the Wise Men 

 say, and think they prove it by m}^ body, that I am but 

 a slow, lowly Mammal, no huntsman, and a cousin of 

 Rabbits and Rats, Avith a small smooth brain that has no 

 business to think and plan. I prove by my OAvn Avorks 

 that I have both thought and judgment, and I Avish that 

 you could visit me and see my Avork yourself. 



