But Brownie was not at all frightened. He was
merely careful. Knowing what a loud noise the
falling tree would make, and that it might lead a
man (or some other enemy) to come prowling around,
to see what had happened, Brownie used to stay hidden
until he felt quite sure that no one was going to
trouble him.
You can understand that waiting, as he did, was no
easy matter when you stop to remember that one of
Brownie’s reasons for cutting down a tree was
that he wanted to eat the tender bark to be found in
the tree-top. It was exactly like knowing your
dinner was on the table, all ready for you, and having
to hide in some dark corner for half an hour, before
going into the dining-room. You know how hungry
you would get, if you had to do that.
Well, Brownie Beaver used to get just as hungry as
any little boy or girl. How he did tear at the
bark, when he finally began to eat! And how full
he stuffed his mouth! And how he did enjoy his
meal! But everybody will admit that he had a
right to enjoy his dinner, for he certainly worked
hard enough to get it.
STICKS AND MUD
Like the dam that held back the water to form the
pond where Brownie Beaver lived, Brownie’s house
was made of sticks and mud. He cut the sticks
himself, from trees that grew near the bank of the
pond; and after dragging and pushing them to the water’s
edge he swam with them, without much trouble, to the
center of the pond, where he wished to build his house.
Of course, the sticks floated in the water; so Brownie
found that part of his work to be quite easy.
He had chosen that spot in the center of the pond
because there was something a good deal like an island
there—only it did not rise quite out of
the water. A good, firm place on which to set
his house— Brownie Beaver considered it.
While he was building his house Brownie gathered his
winter’s food at the same time. Anyone
might think he would have found it difficult to do
two things at once like that. But while he was
cutting sticks to build his new house it was no great
trouble to peel the bark off them. The bark,
you know, was what Brownie Beaver always ate.
And when he cut sticks for his house there was only
one thing about which he had to be careful; he had
to be particular to use only certain kinds of wood.
Poplar, cottonwood, or willow; birch, elm, box elder
or aspen— those were the trees which bore
bark that he liked. But if he had cut down a
hickory or an ash or an oak tree he wouldn’t
have been able to get any food from them at all because
the bark was not the sort he cared for. That
was lucky, in a way, because the wood of those trees
was very hard and Brownie would have had much more
work cutting them down.
A good many of Brownie Beaver’s neighbors thought
he was foolish to go to the trouble of building a
new house, when there were old ones to be had.
And there was a lazy fellow called Tired Tim who laughed
openly at Brownie.
