"•...■ 



PENNSYLVANIA BEAVER 



By HARRY DILLON JONES 



E AVERS found. 

 Come at once. Bring 

 camera." 



This mysterious 

 message, brought to 

 m e Thanksgiving 

 eve by an unusually 

 bright telegraphic 

 Mercury, imposed upon me a problem 

 that remained unsolved after half an 

 hour's pondering. 



The sender was a friend at Strouds- 

 burg, Pa. Surely the timid beaver could 

 not have turned up in that unromantic 

 region to dam rivers and disport him- 

 self in lakes of his own making. But ap- 

 parently the message could mean noth- 

 ing else, and so, in high expectation of 

 being the first to get pictures of a visit 

 unique in the recent history of the state, 

 I made a midnight trip to the home of 

 my friend of the timely tip. 



"We have kept it quite quiet for you," 

 was his smiling greeting. "They have 

 built a dam in the roughest country 

 around, about five miles from here. Get 

 to bed. We drive out at dawn." 



I think that was the coldest drive I 

 ever experienced, but beaver dam pic- 

 tures are not to be obtained every day, 

 and the possibility of getting a snap at 

 some old patriarch at work in a lodge 

 kept me at concert pitch of excitement. 

 To lull the suspicions of the local cor- 

 respondent of one of the newspapers, a 

 youth suspicious of every stranger, and 

 of lynx-eyed sharpness, my friend had 

 equipped himself as for a shooting expe- 

 dition, with cartridges enough in his 

 magazine to kill all the game for a hun- 

 dred miles round. Even then, so care- 

 fully did we guard against tricks by our 

 friend the correspondent that every 

 mile or so we pulled up and listened and 

 waited for signs of being tracked. 



I had been prepared for the innocent 

 exaggeration of an over-imaginative ac- 



quaintance, and to lighten my fall had 

 pictured to myself a ragged attempt at 

 a dam built by some lone, lost beaver 

 who had wandered from his fireside in a 

 fit of temporary insanity, or perhaps 

 had forgotten the pass-word to his 

 lodge. For the satisfactory reality I 

 was not at all prepared. 



When half a mile from the spot where 

 the dam was to be found we alighted 

 and forced our way through the dense 

 underbrush of a wild and desolate coun- 

 try to the side of a river that was frozen 

 solidly from bank to bank. 



"Here is the tree that first gave me 

 the clue," said my guide. 



The tree could not have been less than 

 a foot in diameter, but the sharp teeth 

 of the beavers had been equal to the 

 task of biting it through. This was my 

 first photograph. The marks of the 

 beavers' teeth can be plainly seen in the 

 stump. The tree had fallen forward 

 toward the river, but had not quite 

 reached it, and had doubtless proved 

 too big a burden for the busy little 

 builders, who had left it where it stood 

 until the river should rise and float it 

 down to the scene of the operations. 



A little farther on we came across a 

 ring of half a dozen tree stumps. The 

 trees had been cut down, to fall into the 

 river and drift down to the dam. All 

 around were chips showing the marks 

 of the builders' teeth. Up and down the 

 bank we traveled, finding everywhere 

 signs of recent and industrious work by 

 the colony. In only the one case, the 

 first mentioned, had the beavers failed 

 to gauge the distance of the timber from 

 the river. In every other they had bit- 

 ten down trees so near to the bank that 

 they fell in when cut through. 



Not an ounce of energy had been 

 wasted by the clever little architects, 

 for no more biting was done than was 

 necessary to cause the weakened tree tg 



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