Beaver Man

TALES OF AN EMPTY CABIN--Grey Owl --Dodd, Mead ($3).

Six years ago a tall Ojibway Indian named Wa-Sha-Quon-Asin, which he translates as Grey Owl, headed west from northern Ontario with a family of beaver. With a view to popularizing his campaign to preserve wild life, Grey Owl had started a colony of these engaging little animals, written books about them, lectured in Canada and England, was rewarded when the Canadian National Park Service provided him with a permanent establishment in Prince Albert National Park (northern Saskatchewan). The mainstays of Grey Owl's beaver colony were a husky intelligent male called Rawhide, and a chattery, 60-lb., temperamental female called Jelly Roll. For almost a week they traveled, the beaver riding in a huge, specially constructed tank, Grey Owl staying beside it in the baggage car. At the first site chosen, on Riding Mountain, the beaver built a house 8 ft. high and 16 ft. across, Jelly Roll gave birth to four beaver kittens. Then the enlarged party moved on, leaving established highways at Waskesiu Lake in Prince Albert Park traveling 30 mi. by water to Ajawaan Lake, where everything was packed over a half-mile portage and the journey finished by relays with a canoe.

By the time a cabin was built in the centre of the 2,300 sq. mi. of wilderness that make up the Park, winter was approaching, and the beaver were kept indoors. Transplanted beaver try to get back to their old homes before a freeze-up, particularly when they have stored away a winter's food supply, and in their anxiety swim long distances, get lost, "and run around in a manner directly contrary to their usual habits." Grey Owl had already wired his wife, Anahareo, who was visiting her parents in Ontario, to come help him, and the two Indians had their hands full. They could only sleep in the forenoon, when the beaver slept. The rest of the day and night the tireless animals, in their frustrated industry, gouged up the floor, gnawed through the partition, built high scaffolds in an attempt to reach the water, climbed into bed with Grey Owl and his wife. The Grey Owls put a tank in the room, which pleased the beavers, although the water soaked the floor and moisture spoiled the food. Meanwhile, since the beaver is a loquacious beast, with a range of sounds almost as great as that of humans, a constant chattering, wailing and outright crying accompanied their gnawing and splashing, until the imperturbable red man was almost a nervous wreck. Once he even pulled Rawhide roughly by the tail, but he was shamed immediately after when one of the kittens rushed to Rawhide, uttering whimpering sounds, clutched him tightly and "made a little scene about it."

Grey Owl's account makes these kittens sound like something out of a Walt Disney cartoon. One always walked erect, "staggering around like a decrepit old man." Another discovered he could ride on his mother's flat tail, would catch a ride whenever Jelly Roll waddled around the camp. Sometimes three kittens would ride, one passenger standing on the tail with one leg and marking time with the other on the floor, like a child scooting along on a Kiddie-Kar. Jelly Roll would pay no attention whatsoever.

"I think," says Grey Owl owlishly, "we would all be considerably better off if we could emulate the poise, unconcern, and dignified composure that permitted her to retain her peace of mind." As soon as the lake froze over Grey Owl let the beaver under the ice. Jelly Roll reappeared with great loads of mud, tried to plaster a crack under the cabin door. Working hard all night, she would pile so much mud against it that in the morning Grey Owl had to open the door with a shovel. Spring brought no relief, for as the kittens disappeared, and one beaver started a dam, another began the construction of a comfortable lodge inside Grey Owl's cabin, rushing in with mud from the bottom of the lake at the rate of twelve loads an hour.

Grey Owl's account of his life with the beavers takes up about one-third of Tales of an Empty Cabin. The remainder is stories of the North woods, Indian legends, personal reminiscences, a tribute to the remote Mississauga River of Ontario, descriptions of wilderness heroism, appeals for the preservation of wild life. In part an amateurish piece of work, it is nevertheless lighted with many passages of extremely keen observation and made engaging by Grey Owl's sincerity and humor. Grey Owl did not intend to be a writer and when he started did not know what he was letting himself in for. Now, with his fourth book, he says, "I fully realize that all this while I have been sauntering around on holy ground, improperly dressed and with my boots on." Haunted by memories of his dying race and of the disappearing wilderness, Grey Owl has taken to staying up all night in the woods, finding that he can observe wild life more clearly at dawn and that his imagination works better in the dark. Once a passionate hunter, he has lately developed an almost mystical sense of kinship with animals, sits motionless for hours on a raft near the beaver dam while his personal menagerie, consisting of a moose, beaver, muskrat, deer and squirrels, circulates around him.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.