THE BEAVER

The fur of this animal was the greatest source of immediate wealth the New World afforded. Perhaps the beaver had as much to do with American wars of the French and English as land acquisition. For more than a century the beaver pelt was a common unit of barter from New York to Quebec.

Within the limits of Michigan there are probably more beavers to-day than in any other region of equal area. It is conservative to estimate the number above the Strait as 20,000. Almost exterminated in the Lower Peninsula by 1900, they have notably increased in periods of closed seasons.

That Mickey the beaver (from the Chippewa a-mic) was born in Michigan, unless he migrated from Wisconsin, about 1900, is my guess, for his whiskers and the once rufous-red of his face have turned gray from age. My estimate of his weight is about 100 pounds. This brings him within 11 pounds of the record I have seen in print. He is twice as large in appearance as any other beaver I have met, but his great ancestor of the Pleistocene Age had it over him in size about five times.

After 15 years of quest for a unit of the species who would act before a moving-picture camera, I found Mickey in the Two Hearted River region of Michigan, 30 miles west of the stream's entrance to Lake Superior. In the search I had visited 52 locations having dams and houses. At all but one I obtained with the camera glimpses of beavers abroad in daylight, but only Mickey displayed true histrionic talent. He liked to perform.

Mickey merited regard for giving me an unusual picture, but he won my genuine affection with his substitution of real wonders for the fairyland of boyhood which the scientist dispelled.

The beaver does not carry building material on his tail. He does not use his tail, as a mason would a trowel. There is no "boss" beaver directing a colony at work.

Gone is the marvelous beaver world, with its wizardry, which I credited as a child. But a new domain, replete to me with amazing facts, more than compensates for the loss of boyish concepts. Thank you, Mickey!

Before I bring you to Mickey's home, a pond half a mile in length, converted from a stream not 10 feet wide, let me present my furry friend the beaver as an observer with no scientific pretensions has seen him through years of earnest scrutiny.

If you should come upon two beavers of 40 pounds or thereabout, traveling overland and in Indian file, in late August or early September, you might well assume that they were newlyweds two years of age and looking for a lake or pond in which to build a habitation.

If this young couple located pond water of the proper depth, surrounded with the right complement of trees with edible bark - poplar, birch, willow, ash, and alder - they would construct a hivelike home. Building material might be wood and mud, or stones and mud, or all three. Starting the base on the pond floor with a diameter of 12 to 20 feet, they would taper it, cone like, to a rounding apex 3 to 6 feet above the surface. The general design…"