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The Adventures Of Paddy The Beaver
by
There were some aspen trees growing right on the edge of the pond Paddy had made in the Green Forest. These he cut just as he had cut the trees for his dam. As soon as a tree was down, he would cut it into short lengths, and with these swim out to where the water was deep, close to his new house. He took them one by one and carried the first ones to the bottom, where he pushed them into the mud just enough to hold them. Then, as fast as he brought more, he piled them on the first ones. And so the pile grew and grew.
Jerry Muskrat, Peter Rabbit, Bobby Coon, and the other little people of the Green Forest watched him with the greatest interest and curiosity. They couldn’t quite make out what he was doing. It was almost as if he were building the foundation for another house.
“What’s he doing, Jerry?” demanded Peter, when he could keep still no longer.
“I don’t exactly know,” replied Jerry. “He said that he was going to lay in a supply of food for the winter, just as I told you, and I suppose that is what he is doing. But I don’t quite understand what he is taking it all out into the pond for. I believe I’ll go ask him.”
“Do, and then come tell us,” begged Peter, who was growing so curious that he couldn’t sit still.
So Jerry swam out to where Paddy was so busy. “Is this your food supply, Cousin Paddy?” he asked.
“Yes,” replied Paddy, crawling up on the side of his house to rest. “Yes, this is my food supply. Isn’t it splendid?”
“I guess it is,” replied Jerry, trying to be polite, “though I like lily roots and clams better. But what are you going to do with it? Where is your storehouse?”
“This pond is my storehouse,” replied Paddy. “I will make a great pile right here close to my house, and the water will keep it nice and fresh all winter. When the pond is frozen over, all I will have to do is to slip out of one of my doorways down there on the bottom, swim over here and get a stick, and fill my stomach. Isn’t it handy?”
CHAPTER XIV. A Footprint in the Mud.
Very early one morning Paddy the Beaver heard Sammy Jay making a terrible fuss over in the aspen trees on the edge of the pond Paddy had made in the Green Forest. Paddy couldn’t see because he was inside his house, and it has no window, but he could hear. He wrinkled up his brows thoughtfully.
“Seems to me that Sammy is very much excited this morning,” said he, a way he has because he is so much alone. “When he screams like that, Sammy is usually trying to do two things at once–make trouble for somebody and keep somebody else out of trouble; and when you come to think of it, that’s rather a funny way of doing. It shows that he isn’t all bad, and at the same time he is a long way from being all good. Now, I should say from the sounds that Sammy has discovered Reddy Fox trying to steal up on someone over where my aspen trees are growing. Reddy is afraid of me, but I suspect that he knows that Peter Rabbit has been hanging around here a lot lately, watching me work, and he thinks perhaps he can watch Peter. I shall have to whisper in one of Peter’s long ears and tell him to watch out.”
After a while he heard Sammy Jay’s voice growing fainter and fainter in the Green Forest. Finally he couldn’t hear it at all. “Whoever was here has gone away, and Sammy has followed just to torment them,” thought Paddy. He was very busy making a bed. He is very particular about his bed, is Paddy the Beaver. He makes it of fine splinters of wood which he splits off with those wonderful great cutting teeth of his. This makes the driest kind of a bed. It requires a great deal of patience and work, but patience is one of the first things a little Beaver learns, and honest work well done is one of the greatest pleasures in the world, as Paddy long ago found out for himself. So he kept at work on his bed for some time after all was still outside.