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