Toodle and Noodle Flat-tail: The Jolly Beaver Boys

by Howard Roger Garis

"I guess he must be playing a trick on me," said Toodle, as he picked up a piece of a birch twig in his front paw and began chewing the soft bark. A beaver's front paw, you know, is almost like a monkey's, and he can hold things in it almost as well as you can in your hand. His hind feet, though, are made for swimming and are webbed like a duck's.

All of a sudden Toodle felt some one pushing him from behind, and before he knew what had happened he went kerflop! off the little hill on which he was sitting, into the water.

"Wow!" cried Toodle. "Who did that, I wonder? If it was a bad fox, or a lynx, or some animal that wants to eat me, I'd better stay under water, or go back home."

But Toodle Flat-tail was a brave little chap and he wanted to see who it was that had pushed him into the water. So he swam around a little, and then he carefully stuck his nose up, and then his eyes, and then, sitting in the same place where he had been sitting, he saw his brother Noodle. Noodle was laughing as hard as he could laugh.

"Oh, ho! So it was you who pushed me in, eh?" cried Toodle. "Well, I'll fix you for that!"

Out of the water he came with a rush and raced after Noodle. But Noodle waddled away and soon the two little beaver boys were having a regular game of tag.

Finally Toodle caught Noodle and pushed him into the water. But do you s'pose Noodle minded that? Not a bit of it, for he was more at home in the water than on land. In fact beavers have to go quite slowly on land, and they walk with a waddle like a duck, but in the water they can swim so fast that scarcely anything can catch them.

Toodle and Noodle splashed each other about in the pond, throwing water all over themselves, wrestling, playing tag and hide-and-go-seek, and when they were tired they climbed out on the bank and rested.

They looked at the other beavers working away. Some of the older ones were mending a hole in the dam. The beaver dam, you know, is just like a time when it rains and the gutter in front of your house fills with water. Then if your mamma lets you, you take some sticks and stones and mud, and pile it in the gutter so the water can't run down. This is called a dam, and it holds back the water, making it deeper back of the dam and shallow in front.

Beavers do the same thing. They build a dam across a little brook, so as to make a deep pond, for beavers have to have deep water to live in, and build their houses in; and in this pond, back of the dam, they also keep their food for the winter, big pieces of trees with soft bark on. The beaver dam is made of tree trunks and branches, sticks, mud, grass, stones—in fact, anything the beavers can get. When the dam breaks all the beavers work together to mend it.