But watching beavers work at night is not only interesting, it is easy to do, and I have frequently taken both women and children to share in the sport.
It is astonishing how far, on a still night, beavers will hear such a sound and come to help their friends at work.
The winter supply of food, being mostly poplar bark, is derived from the branches of green trees which the beavers cut down in the autumn for that very purpose.
And thus, too, that great work is being steadily carried on by the living beavers of to-day.
Then the beavers tunnel their two runways into the centre of the mass from an underwater level on the outside to an over-water level on the inside of the mound.
But Oo-koo-hoo, slipping away in his hunting canoe, paddled up a little creek into a small lake in which he knew a colony of beavers lived.
The beavers excavate canals--sometimes hundreds of feet in length--to enable them to reach more easily and float home the wood they have cut from freshly felled trees lying far beyond the reaches of their pond.
Is it any wonder that the Indians say that the beavers were once human beings, whom, for the punishment of some misconduct The Master of Life condemned to get down and grovel upon the ground as four-footed animals for the rest of their days.
Otters, muskrats, and beavers swam its inrushing creeks; wolverines prowled its rocky glens, and nightly concerts of howling wolves echoed along its shores.
The babies were not the only addition to the new city during that year, for about mid-summer another pair of beavers came and built a lodge near the upper end of the pond.
And now you might have seen the beavers coming home to rest after a night's labor at felling timber--swimming across the pond toward the island, with only the tops of their two little heads showing above the water.
Then, one by one, the beavers came back to their old haunts.
Such a little while ago he had seemed in the very prime of life, and had been one of the handsomest beavers in the woods, with fur of the thickest and softest and silkiest, and a weight of probably sixty pounds.
Even a scientific trapper may sometimes make mistakes, and when this one came around to visit his trap, and found it sprung but empty, he thought that the beavers must have learned its secret and sprung it on purpose.
By spring the few beaversthat remained were so thoroughly frightened that the ancient town was again abandoned--this time forever.
No two beavers leave marks that are exactly alike.
But that did not keep him from being the oldest, the wisest, the most knowing of all the beavers in the community, just as his father had been before him in another town.
But even young beavers will sometimes grow tired of play, and at last they all lay down on the grass in the warm, quiet sunshine of the autumn afternoon.
The beavers have vanished from their old habitation, but their work remains in the broad meadows cleared of timber by their teeth, and covered with rich black soil by the inundations from their dam.
Then the beavers began laying mud and stones and moss on this brush foundation, scooping them up with their hands, and holding them under their chins as they waddled or swam to the dam.
Spring came at last, and many of the male beavers prepared to leave home for a while.
He decided that watching beavers wasn't very interesting, hardly worth the trouble it cost; and he guessed he knew enough about them, anyhow.
There's a new invasion, which we think may unsettle our old ways as much as the invasion of the Crees did those of the Stoneys and Beavers long ago.
They fought the Beaversand the Stoneys clear to the edges of the Rockies, where we are now.
Well, the beaversliked the place, and piled up their dam, while the water went farther and farther back across the swamp.
A colony of beavers came along and put up their dam across that creek, and that backed the water up a foot or two.
In the winter time when they found the beavers in their houses, they first broke up all the thin ice around about, and then by breaking into the houses, drove the beavers into the water.
As the beaver does not eat fish, I inquired of Tecaughretanego why the beavers made such large dams?
There was seemingly no water communication with this pond, and beaversdid not travel by land.
He told Smith of a certain pond where he knew all the beavers were frequently killed during a hunting season, but they were just as thick again on the following winter.
In conversation with his Indian friend Smith happened to say that beavers caught fish.
The boy suggested that there might be subterranean passages leading to this pond, whereby the beavers could gain access to it, but Tecaughretanego was not entirely convinced.
The Indian laughed at him, and told him that beaversate flesh of no kind, but lived on the bark of trees, roots, and other growing things.
He was quite a philosopher in his way, but he was rather inclined to believe, like most of his fellows, that geese turned to beavers and snakes to raccoons.
The cormorants and herons, that live upon fish, are they not the otters and beavers of the air?
Beavers will erect walls, and construct houses more skilfully than our ablest architects.
Many Beavers and the war leaders had called the warriors about them.
Then Many Beavers and Walking Bear approached Running Fox.
She is talking against you," Many Beavers said, treacherously.
Many Beavers will go with me," Running Fox said, angrily.
They suddenly subsided into silent amazement at sight of Many Beavers and his companion.
However, as Walking Bear had thoroughly aroused them, the words of Many Beavers seemed to have little effect.
Then Many Beavers and the war leader approached, and she hurried away.
Many Beavers held up his hand and called out in strong, commanding tones.
Many Beaverssat up and the Delawares removed the gag from his mouth.
Beverley, as its name imports, had been a haunt of beavers before the monks began to till its fruitful dingles.
An Indian with him said that it took its name from the number of beavers formerly found on it.
A few beavers (Castor fiber) may still be met with in many of the streams.
Otters and pine martens are taken in good numbers and beavers occur more sparingly.
Beavers have a language as well as men: there was always a chief engineer who told the workers just what to do, and he himself rectified their mistakes.
As they entered the water that great war party of beavers swam out in all directions for the shores of the pond, where, scattered all along, Strong Dam and his kin were already cutting the young trees for winter food.
She did so, and cut clear through the ground, and looking down he could see the beavers sitting in their home, singing beautiful songs, and dancing strange and beautiful dances in time to them.
Day after day Lone Bull hunted the animals and birds, brought in their skins for his woman to cure, and night after night the beavers taught him their medicine, all the sacred prayers and dances and ceremonies of it.
When spring came, there was still considerable food bark untouched on the underwater piles, but, oh, how glad the beavers were to be able to swim about again, and eat fresh bark from living tree branches.
Below his pond there were other ponds; and as he swam through them many of the beavers living in them asked him where he was going.
Oh, yes, beavers sang in those days, as you shall learn.
Days passed; and yet more days, and no wife-seeking beavers came to the pond on Little River.
And he sat there and watched more than a hundred beavers cross the dam close in front of him, and slide quietly into the pond, and even then could hardly believe that he was not dreaming.
Said he: "Beavers build a great dam, often working moons and moons to complete it.
The glass cliff overlooks a lake where the beavers built a dam about a mile and a half long in a zig-zag line, as their necessities prompted.
If you turn up a byway, there is no more of you, and the beavers work your buggy into next year's dam.
Out jumped all the beavers into the water, and so escaped.
The next day the dog, finding that his method of catching beavers had been discovered, went to a wood at some distance and broke off a charred limb from a burned tree.
Now, unfortunately, in order to gratify his ambition, the beavershad made him too large to crawl out of the hole.
Taking his station on the raised dam where the stream escaped, he watched to see whether any of the beavers would show themselves.
Already the beavers were preparing for the winter, and the human animal knew that he must do the same; for the wilderness is kind to those who keep her commandments, but implacably cruel to those who will not live according to her law.
In their big mud-and-stick strongholds the beavers held a council of war.
It is also more than likely that the older beavers who had fled from Baree that morning gave an account of their adventures, again emphasizing the fact that the stranger, while frightening them, had shown no disposition to attack them.
The other littlebeavers had gone into a thick clump of young alders.
Gently Baree nosed him, and after a moment or two Umisk got up on his webbed feet, while fully twenty or thirty beavers were making a tremendous fuss in the water near the shore.
At times there were from six to ten young beavers engaged in this sport, and now and then one of the older beavers would waddle to the top of the slide and take a turn with the youngsters.
It began to take the place of the old windfall, and in the beavers themselves he found a companionship which made up, in a way, for his loss of the protection and friendship of Kazan and Gray Wolf.
He did not try to conceal himself now, and at least half a dozenbeavers had a good look at him before he came to the point where the pond narrowed down to the width of the stream, almost half a mile from the dam.
Instantly the other two were on Umisk, and the four little beavers rolled over and over, kicking with their short feet and spatting with their tails, and all the time emitting soft little squeaking cries.
I was going to talk to my friend the bear, but beavers build dams, that is easy to see.
The beavers on the Marquis of Bute's property in Scotland cut down trees and built dams as did the beavers in Sir Edmund Loder's park in Sussex, and even in the Zoological Gardens they recently constructed a "lodge.
I have heard that there are beavers in the Danube which do not make dams, but among those introduced into this country in recent years the dam building instinct seems to have survived the change.
The race of beavers would be infinitely preferable.
The republic of beavers is superior even to that of ants; at least, if we may judge by their performances in masonry.
When the young beavers are two years old, they leave their old home, and choose a new place in which to build houses for themselves.
When they reach home Yellow Thunder's mamma will take the tails of the beavers and put them in the pot to boil.
Remember that nothing could be seen to show where thebeavers had gone.
Not many miles up the river above Yellow Thunder's home, beavers are hunted.
There are generally only two young beavers in the family.
Beavers are breathing there, or it would not move so quickly.
There are four beavers in all,--two old ones and their young about two years of age.
Once in a great while, hunters find beavers that the Indians call "old bachelors.
Yellow Thunder believes that the beavers were once people and able to speak like himself.
The Social Beavers to which we belong," he said, "live in small colonies, and work together for the general good.
The young Beavers sniffed eagerly, but Mother Beaver was not to be put off.
When we live in marshy places we build winter houses, just as the Beavers do, though ours are not so strong, and less than three feet high above the surface of the swamp.
But the Beavers were only just getting into their work, as they told him gaily, though he, of course, might take a nap.
The young Beavershad a fine time of it that bright spring day.
Phil was feeling rather tired, so, while the young Beavers started another game, he sat with their parents, trying to understand what they meant when they spoke of "IT.
But Phil preferred to crack his own nuts; his teeth, though the Beavers scorned them, were strong enough for this, he thought.
He dived into the river, using his right leg instead of a tail to splash the water as the Beavers did, and soon found a Beaver's hole.
He straightway planned a wonderful new dam that should put the old one to shame; and the number of trees the Beavers felled that night was simply marvellous.
The young Beavers were trembling still, and even the bravest of their elders were afraid to venture out from their retreat.
Phil was very curious to see the young Wolverenes, but somehow he did not think it would be fair to the Beavers to be on such friendly terms with an animal that ate them.
Phil crept in between them, and was soon asleep, while the two old Beavers watched in turn to see that all was well.
In regard to the beavers (Castoridæ) it appears that they harbor many species of round worms, and also several flukes, but they do not appear to have been very much studied.
The Fasciola hepatica is occasionally found in the liver, but the most common helminth of beavers is Amphistoma subtriquetrum.
Accordingly, in the morning, we surrounded the tree, both men and women, as many at a time as could conveniently work at it; and here we toiled like beavers till the sun went down.
The young beaversare born in April and May and there are usually only two at a birth, but sometimes there will be three.
Beavers are not given to roaming, except during the summer months, and in such cases they always return to their home before cold weather comes.
Somewhere on the edge of the pool where the water is not too deep, the beavers make their lodge, or house.
In the Northern districts, where the ponds are covered with ice six months of the year, the beavers spend the entire winter under the ice.
During the summer months many of the beavers travel about on the streams and if a house is found at this time it may be deserted, or at the best, only one or two animals will be found there.
Of course, one could not make a success of raising beavers in an open field.
In this cove they discovered several savages, who had come there to hunt beavers and to fish.
The above list will hopefully give you a few useful examples demonstrating the appropriate usage of "beavers" in a variety of sentences. We hope that you will now be able to make sentences using this word.
