Colorado -- Description and travel; Natural history -- Outdoor books; Rocky Mountain National Park (Colo.) -- History; Rocky Mountains
One brook went dry and the beaver folk on it moved up-stream. They
left the dam well repaired, a new house, and a pile of green aspen
cuttings in the pond. They were ready for winter when the
water-failure forced them to find a new home. They scooped out a small
basin by a spring in the top of a moraine, used the material for a
dam, and into the pond thus formed dragged a few aspens and willows. A
winter den was dug in the bank.
The colonists at the other low-water place abandoned their home and
moved three miles down-stream. The tracks in the mud, a few bits of
fur, told too well a story of a tragedy during this enforced journey.
While traveling along the almost dry bed of the stream and at a point
where the water was too shallow to allow them to dive and escape, two,
and probably three, of their number were captured by coyotes. The
survivors found a deep hole in a large channel, and here they
hurriedly accumulated a scanty supply of green aspen. As winter came
on, they dug a burrow in the bank. This had a passageway which opened
into the water about two feet below the surface and close to their
food-supply.
The Cascade colonists held on for the winter. Their pond was deep, and
their careful repair of the dam had enabled them to retain water to
the very top of it. However, beaver cannot long endure water that is
stagnant. This is especially true in winter-time. A beaver house is
almost without ventilation, but its entrance ways are full of water;
the fresh water of the pond appears to absorb impurities from the air
of the house. Apparently stagnant water will not do this. Then, too, a
stagnant pond freezes much more rapidly than the waters of a pond
that are constantly stirred and aerated by the inflow of fresh water.
The Cascade colonists entered the winter with an abundant food-supply
that was stored close to the house. The pond was full of water, but it
was becoming stagnant. The drought continued and no snow fell. This
was another disadvantage to the colony. If a pond is thickly blanketed
with snow, it does not freeze so deeply nor so rapidly as when its
surface is bare. By the middle of October the pond was solidly frozen.
Drought and continued cold weather came and stayed. Christmas week not
a drop of water was flowing from the pond and apparently none was
flowing into it. The ice was clear, and, the day I called, there
appeared to be digging going on in the pond beneath the ice; close to
the dam the water was so roily that I could not see into it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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