ed foot with one nip, leaving only a
mutilated paw for the hunter. With the deadfall a small beaver may have
gone entirely inside the snare before the front log falls; and an animal
whose teeth saw through logs eighteen inches in diameter in less than
half an hour can easily eat a way of escape from a wooden trap. Other
things are against the hunter. A wolverine may arrive on the scene
before the trapper and eat the finest beaver ever taken; or the trapper
may discover that his victim is a poor little beaver with worthless,
ragged fur, who should have been left to forage for three or four years.

* * * * *

All these risks can be avoided by waiting till the ice is thick enough
for the trapper to cut trenches. Then he returns with a woodman's axe
and his dog. By sounding the ice, he can usually find where holes have
been hollowed out of the banks. Here he drives stakes to prevent the
beaver taking refuge in the shore vaults. The runways and channels,
where the beaver have dragged trees, may be hidden in snow and iced
over; but the man and his dog will presently find them.

The beaver always chooses a stream deep enough not to be frozen solid,
and shallow enough for it to make a mud foundation for the house without
too much work. Besides, in a deep, swift stream, rains would carry away
any house the beaver could build. A trench across the upper stream or
stakes through the ice prevent escape that way.

The trapper then cuts a hole in the dam. Falling water warns the
terrified colony that an enemy is near. It may be their greatest foe,
the wolverine, whose claws will rip through the frost-hard wall as
easily as a bear delves for gophers; but their land enemies cannot
pursue them into water; so the panic-stricken family--the old parents,
wise from many such alarms; the young three-year-olds, who were to go
out and rear families for themselves in the spring; the two-year-old
cubbies, big enough to be saucy, young enough to be silly; and the baby
kittens, just able to forage for themselves and know the soft alder rind
from the tough old bark unpalatable as mud--pop pell-mell from the high
platform of their houses into the water. The water is still falling.
They will presently be high and dry. No use trying to escape up-stream.
They see that in the first minute's wild scurry through the shallows.
Besides, what's this across the creek? Stakes, not put there by any
beaver; for there is no bark o