Colorado -- Description and travel; Natural history -- West (U.S.); Rocky Mountains
It was the habit of these colonists to transfer a tree to the harvest
pile promptly after cutting it down. But one morning I found logs on
slides and in canals, and unfinished work in the grove, as though
everything had been suddenly dropped in the night when work was at its
height. Coyotes had howled freely during the night, but this was not
uncommon. In going over the grounds I found the explanation of this
untidy work in a bear track and numerous wolf tracks, freshly moulded
in the muddy places.
After the bulk of the harvest was gathered, I went one day to the
opposite side of the moraine and briefly observed the methods of the
Island beaver colony. The ways of the two colonies were in some things
very different. In the Spruce Tree Colony the custom was to move the
felled aspen promptly to the harvest pile. In the Island Colony the
custom was to cut down most of the harvest before transporting any of
it to the pile beside the house. Of the one hundred and sixty-two
trees that had been felled for this harvest, one hundred and
twenty-seven were still lying where they fell. However, the work of
transporting was getting under way; a few logs were in the pile beside
the house, and numerous others were scattered along the canals,
runways, and slides between the house and the harvest grove.
There was more wasted labor, too, in the Island Colony. This was
noticeable in the attempts that had been made to fell limb-entangled
trees that could not fall. One five-inch aspen had three times been
cut off at the bottom. The third cut was more than three feet from the
ground, and was made by a beaver working from the top of a fallen log.
Still this high-cut aspen refused to come down and there it hung like
a collapsed balloon entangled in tree-tops.
Before the white man came it is probable that beaver did most of their
work in the day-time. But at present, except in the most remote
localities, day work is perilous. Prowling hunters have compelled most
beaver to work at night. The Spruce Tree Colony was an isolated one,
and occasionally its members worked and even played in the sunshine.
Each day I secluded myself, kept still, and waited; and on a few
occasions watched them as they worked in the light.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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