it easy for me to keep track of them, and
to keep up with their social activities. Neighborly interest must be
kept alive by the neighbors' doings, you know!

They certainly showed no inclination to become dull from overwork!
About the time the ice on their pond began to break up, they would take
their youngsters and start upon their summer vacation. Upon a number
of occasions I found their familiar tracks along the streams eight or
ten miles below their home site; once more than fifteen miles away. On
their rambles they met other beaver families, and stopped to visit; the
young people of the combined families played and splashed about, while
their more sedate elders lay contentedly basking in the sun.

But late August or early September always saw Mr. and Mrs. Peg back
home; usually without their youngsters. Those precocious paddlers had
set up homes for themselves or had wedded into other tribes. The old
couple at once set to work, toiling night and day, taking no time off
for rest. They repaired their dam to raise the water to the desired
level, replastered their house inside and out with mud, and in addition
cut down a number of aspen trees, severed their trunks into lengths
they could handle, and brought both trunks and limbs down into the
pond. They towed the heavy green wood down first and piled it in the
deep water near their house, the rest they piled upon these until their
larder was full. They ate the whole of the smaller limbs of the aspen,
but only the bark of the larger boughs and trunks. They used the wood
for house and dam construction.

Trappers have told me that the streams beaver live in are poor fishing
places because the furry inhabitants eat the fish. By careful
observation, I proved to my own satisfaction at least, that quite the
opposite is true. For the deep ponds made by the dams they build are
literally spawning pools for the trout, breeding grounds and
hatcheries. They are also pools of refuge, to which the fish flee to
elude the fisherman, and in their warmer depths the finny tribe "hole
up" when the streams are frozen over in winter. I have lain motionless
upon a bowlder overlooking a beaver-inhabited stream and watched large
trout lazing about almost within reach of a preoccupied paddler,
apparently in no alarm over his nearness. Neither paid the other "any
mind." I am sure that beavers eat neither fish nor flesh.

Which reminds me that early in my mountain experience I h