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Show BEAVERS AT WORK ON A STREAM IN . : IDAHO The beaver is the original logger and an intrepid riverman, according to Forest Examiner Lee Miles, in a letter to the Ogden forest service headquarters, in his work amid vast forest solicitudes, Miles meets many things of interest in students of nature, na-ture, and at Garden Valley, a few miles up the Middle Payette from its Junction with the South Fork, he has had an opportunity to observe the habits and history of the beaver on an unusually large scale. Mr. Miles says : "Beaver have inhabited Garden Valley so long that the most accessible accessi-ble aspen, alder, and other choice articles ar-ticles of food to these rodents or knawers have been cut down Hence of recent years, Mr. and Mtb. Beaver and family have had to draw their winter's food supply from groves rather hard to get at. And in doing I so they have disclosed to the interested inter-ested observer a marvelous ingenuity ingenu-ity "There is a remarkable parallel be tween man's methods of logging the timber resources of any region anu the beaver's. Man cuts the timber nearest home. When that supply is exhausted, he cuts all trees close to drlvable streams and floats them down. And when this timber is exhausted, ex-hausted, too, he devises methods of overland transport and thus gets timber tim-ber formerly considered inaccessible, but gets it at a cost or time and work. So, too, with the beaver. "Those of the Beaver bottoms, when they found the aspen groves near home exhausted, ascended the Payette Pay-ette South fork, felled such aspen as they found on its banks and floated it down 6tream to their homes. During Dur-ing flood times the river had cut narrow nar-row bavous from the hea er reservoirs to the stream and these the beaver had deepened and damned. And up these, to their ponds, they towed and tugged their aspen, knawing them Into sections when necessary to handle them easier, "In the course of time this second I supply of aspen had become exhaust- ed and the beaver were compelled to I get their timber from greater and j greater distances from the stream I bank. One of the most Interesting ; of their logging operations is on the flat near the mouth of Wash creek. Here there are a chain of narrow lit tie ponds occupying what was once the bed of the South Fork, but Is now some thirty feet above it. In the aspen growing with the pine trees beside be-side these ponds the beaver have found a food supply for many years Their problem has been to get this food to the river And this they have done by means very similar to those employed by man under similar clr cumstances. The) have dug canals whore this could be done and floated their logs from pond to pond. Where rocks Interfered with digging, they have built dirt chutes or slides and have skidded or dragged their logsi to the next pond. Where the last pond drains to the river they have built a dam and thus made a storage reservoir When ready to begin their 'drive' they have 'chuted' their logs over the dam Bnd down an overflow ' drain, like a lumberman's flume, into the river. And thence they have driven driv-en them home. "On the drive, tbe beaver is in his element. He rivals the man riverhog, , or driver, In efficiency, though not ' ln plcture6queneu8. True, he can I ., ...,!,. . :,,r. at . Mm.. Kut Iia ; VI 1 I V 3 UU ' J -Jli' ify a Uiuc, uul l never has a Jam nor loses a water-soaked water-soaked 'dead-head.' He cannot stand on a log and whirl it till the white water foams' over It in a sheet, but he gets there, quietly, quickly, and with little fuss. When it hangs up on a sandbar, he gets behind it and shoves it off When it rnters a rapid, he drops down stream and waits for It in quieter water. When he nears home he edges it into the backwater near shore and grasping it to his chest with his fore legs he floats It into his canal by paddling with his powerful hind legs and a scull-like movement of his paddle-shaped tall. "When he needs assistance to got a heavy section, which to a beaver is six or eight inches in diameter and several feet long, over an obstruction, other beaver como. apparently with out bidding, to his assistance. For the beaver are true Utopians all for one, one for all; no bosses, no shirkers, no favorites. And their motto, which they live up to, is 'A maximum of efficiency ef-ficiency for a minimum of fuss'" |