Edgar Beaver's Destiny

About the Book

Edgar Beaver's Destiny has been constructed as an environmental fable

and is based on the actual natural history of beaver life.  As a

fable, an environmental lesson is taught in a story that involves the

words and actions of animals.  And the story reflects the true

natural history of beaver life.  It demonstrates the way they live

and work in their lodges, dams and ponds, and the kind of food they

eat, in this case Yellowstone Park of the 1920s and 30s.  This fable

is not written for any special age with special age-approved

language.  That is, the book is not a children's story, though many

young readers have read and enjoyed it.  It is written more along the

lines of Victorian children's stories which appeared 80-100 years ago.

Edgar Beaver is someone who doesn't settle for the status quo.  He

knows that beaverdom has a particular way of doing things, and that

includes chewing trees down, taking a little to eat from them, then

letting them lie on the ground to be degraded.  Edgar cannot and will

not accept that habit, that way of doing things. Edgar is disgusted

with all the beavers he knows.  He thinks that beavers should try to

stifle their impulse to chew down every tree in sight and try to

confine themselves to the trees they can and want to eat, or use for

the lodge or dam because they are wasting the trees of the forest and

a forced to move to new locations.  Also two year old beavers have to

leave their home lodges too.  Of course, Edgar is a failure, for

beavers by some compulsion in their nature chew down as many trees as

is possible and eat only a fraction of the food on the tree.  It's a

congenital habit.  They just have to chew down trees.

This galls Edgar.  Why do beavers do this? he thinks.  Beavers waste

90% of the food on the tree.  Why don't they just chew down trees

they can use, he says.  The beavers in Edgar's life never seem to get

it.  Even Edgar's own family can't see why he's making so much fuss

about the issue.

Although Edgar's primary worry seems to be the eating habits and life

style of beavers, he has other worries.  For one thing, at two year's

old he's reached the time he has to leave his family's lodge.  Worse

he never has gotten up the courage to ask Eula Mae Beaver, his most

beloved soul mate, to join him and start a family at another

location.  He's too shy, lacks confidence and neither does he have

the kind of talent both his brother Emmett and Eula Mae are bursting

with.

Mack and his fellow bullies are rogue beavers who have fun picking on

Edgar.  Rogue beavers, having been forced out of their own beaver

colonies for bad behavior, force younger, less strong beavers to get

food for them.  Mack picks one last fight with Edgar before he leaves

the lodge, and the two engage in a struggle almost to the death.

Both are pulled out of the pond, and while in a coma Edgar has a

strange dream in which the Great Beaver tells him the history of

beavers from the time of giant beavers, through their relationships

with Native Americans, the white trappers who kill them almost to

extinction while using there underfur for hats, up to Edgar's own

time.  Edgar wakes up shaken both from his near death experience and

the story of his beaver forebears he has dreamed.  His father

interprets the dream, is reconciled with Edgar, and Edgar falls off

to sleep again.

When Edgar is awakened, Eula Mae is sitting by is side, and to his

great astonishment and joy, Eula Mae tells him she wants to join him

when he leaves the lodge.  The have a joyous love swim in the pond

and set off.  They swim down the river, pick a spot to make their

lodge, though they're worried that something might be

About the Author

In 1970 Joseph Petulla celebrated the first Earth Day at the University of California in Berkeley. He has taught environmental history, values, ethics, policy and management at two major universities. Edgar Beaver's Destiny is a creative reflection of his lifelong interest in teaching the imperative of building an environmentally sustainable society.