TOTO LEARNS TO GNAW
Toto, the little beaver boy, was a bright, bustling chap. He was what
is called a “hustler” or a “bustler”――that is, some one always ready
for work or play. But just now, as Toto saw the little girl coming
toward the bush where he was hidden, he did not know what to do.
“But I’m going to do something!” thought the beaver boy. “I’m not going
to let her catch me! Maybe that’s a trap she tried to get me in――maybe
that shiny thing is a trap!”
Toto knew what traps were, for his father and mother had told him about
them, and how to keep away from their sharp teeth that caught beavers
and muskrats by the legs.
Millie came closer and closer. With bright, eager eyes, almost as
bright and eager as those of Toto himself, she looked at the bush.
Toto was all ready to run, and he wished, more than ever, that the
river was not frozen, since he would not have been a bit afraid if
he could have jumped in the flowing stream to swim away. He was not
afraid of any creature in the water, and the fishes were friends of his.
Then, all at once, just as Toto was going to start to run and do his
best on the slippery ice, he felt himself falling. He had been standing
on the edge of the frozen river, where the ice was very thin, and it
had given away, letting him down through a hole into the water.
“Oh, now I’m all right!” said Toto to himself when he felt the water
wetting his thick fur, though it could not wet his skin beneath.
And so he was. He was in water now, where he felt much more at home
than on the ice. And as he slipped down, tail first through the hole
that had broken, he had a glimpse of the little girl.
The little girl saw Toto, too, and as soon as she had seen him she
clapped her red-mittened hands again and cried:
“Oh, it’s a little beaver! He knocked my skate out to me! Oh, don’t go
away, little beaver!” cried Millie. “I won’t hurt you!”
But of course Toto did not know that, and he did not know what the
little girl was saying. He just wanted to get away from her, and back
to his own stick house. So he dived down under the water, his fur being
so thick and warm that he was not a bit cold. And away he swam beneath
the ice that covered Winding River.
“Oh, he’s gone!” cried Millie, when she saw the beaver disappear. “I
wish I could have him to take home! Maybe I’ll see him again! Anyhow,
he was nice to shove my skate out to me!”
Millie sat down on the bank and began putting on the skate that had
slipped off, causing her to fall. And, though she never guessed it, she
was to see Toto again, and the beaver was to see how Millie and her
grandmother were made happy.
“Well, Toto, where have you been?” asked his mother, when, some little
time later, the beaver boy swam up to the front door of the stick
house. “I’ve been looking all over for you!”
“I didn’t mean to stay away so long, Mother,” answered Toto, in beaver
talk, of course. “But it was so slippery on the ice that, when I got to
going, it was hard to stop. I tried to eat some bark, but it was full
of stickers, and then I had an adventure.”
“What’s an adventure?” asked Sniffy, who was not quite so bold and
daring as was Toto.
“It’s something that happens to you,” Toto answered.
“And what happened to you?” asked Mr. Beaver.
Toto told them about Millie’s skate coming off, though of course he did
not call it a skate. He said it was a “trap.”
“You did well to hurry away,” said his father. “It’s lucky for you that
you fell through the hole in the ice and could swim. Always, when you
are in danger, get in the water if you can. Very few animals can swim
as fast as we beavers swim. The water is the place for us, even though
we have to go on land to gnaw down the trees for the dams we make.”
“Why do we have to make dams?” asked Sniffy.
“To make the water deep enough for our houses in places where it is
otherwise too shallow,” answered Mr. Beaver. “By putting a lot of
trees, sticks, clumps of grass, and mud across a stream the water
backs up, and gets deep behind the dam, over which it flows, making a
waterfall. We need to build our houses behind the dam, so as to have
our doors under water. If we didn’t, other animals from the land would
come in and get us. But land animals can not get into our houses as
long as the front doors are under water, though it is easy for us
to dive down and come up inside where the water does not reach. Did
anything else happen to you, Toto?” asked his father.
“Well, I swam home under the ice as fast as I could,” answered the
little beaver boy.
“Did you see anything of Mr. Cuppy?” asked Mrs. Beaver.
“No, I didn’t,” Toto answered. “Did some one try to catch him in a
trap, too?”
“No. But he said he’d send you home if he met you,” replied Mrs.
Beaver. “Of course he didn’t meet you. I’ll go out and tell him he
needn’t look for you any more, as you are now at home.”
“Yes, and I’m hungry, too,” said Toto. “The bark on the bush under
which I hid was full of thorns. I couldn’t eat it.”
“Here is some nice aspen bark,” said Mr. Beaver. “Let me see your
teeth, Toto?”
“What for?” the little beaver boy wanted to know.
“To see if they are going to be strong enough to help us gnaw down
trees this summer,” went on Mr. Beaver.
Toto opened his mouth. His teeth were strong and white, that is all
except the four front, or gnawing teeth. Two of these in his upper jaw
and two in his lower jaw were a sort of red, or orange, color. All
beavers have orange-colored gnawing teeth, and the rest are white, like
yours.
“Humph! Yes, I think you’ll be big enough to help us gnaw down trees
this summer,” said Daddy Beaver, as he looked at Toto’s orange teeth,
which were almost as sharp and strong as the chisels the carpenter uses
to smooth wood with which to build a house.
“Is it very hard to gnaw trees down?” Toto wanted to know.
“It must be easy,” said Sniffy, who was eating some aspen bark in the
stick house. “See how easy I can strip this bark off this piece of log.”
“Gnawing bark is much easier than gnawing through the wood of a big,
hard tree,” said Mr. Beaver. “You boys will learn that soon enough. But
here, Toto, try some of this bark.”
So Toto and Sniffy gnawed the bark, and Toto told his brother more
about the little girl he had seen. He thought she had tried to trap
him, but we know Millie had done nothing of the sort. Only her skate
had come off.
“And what do you think!” the little girl said, after she had reached
home and was telling her mother about it that night at supper. “My
skate slid right over the ice, under a bush, and a little beaver that
was there pushed it out to me.”
“So the beavers are around here, are they?” asked Millie’s father. “I
wondered what made a part of Winding River flow so slowly this fall.
The beavers must have dammed it up. Well, the beavers are hard-working
animals and do little harm. We won’t disturb them.”
The rest of that winter Toto lived in the stick house with the other
beavers. He did not go out very often, for there is not much beavers
can do until the ice and snow are gone. Toto went out on the frozen
river a few times, however, but he did not again see the little girl on
skates. And though Millie went out skating, she did not see Toto until
later in the season. I’ll tell you about that after a while.
[Illustration: And he slipped down, tail first through the hole.]
Meanwhile the sun climbed higher and higher in the sky. It warmed the
earth, the snow and ice melted, the banks of Winding River became
green, as the leaves came out on the trees and bushes, and one day Mr.
Beaver said:
“Come with me, Toto and Sniffy. You are going to learn how to gnaw down
trees.”
“Are we going to help build the dam bigger?” asked Toto.
“Yes, that’s what you are,” his father said.
He dived down in the water, to slip out of the front door, and the
two beaver boys followed him. Their noses closed, and they kept their
mouths tightly shut while under water. But they had their eyes open
to see where to swim. They came out on top of the water not far from
their own house. But almost as soon as they had poked up their noses to
take long breaths, Toto and Sniffy heard a booming, whacking noise, and
their father cried:
“Back! Back, boys! Dive down! There’s danger!”