THE SWEETEST THING

Art Wolinsky is a retired science teacher in New Hampshire with all the best audio visual toys. Years ago he worked with Mike Callahan to install some culvert protection on the dam near his condominium. He has watched his beaver family grow and change over the years, and become a regional expert in the field, frequently giving lectures on the topic of coexistence. Yesterday he posted the most adorable beaver video that I have ever seen, and that’s saying truly something – because I’ve seen a lot of adorable beaver videos.

Look closely at the video and feel free to watch it again. That young beaver sees the tree damage, and knows his family has been hard at work. He wants to help. So he does the only thing he knows how.

He tries to dam the tree!

And if this doesn’t completely melt your heart and make you care about beavers forever, you are, in fact, a heartless bastard and I can’t possibly help you. To me this demonstrates a) How beaver building isn’t all instinct. B) How much social modelling is involved in learning for beavers. and C) How beavers truly feel about work.

He wants to help because that’s what beavers do. Even though nobody tells him to or is waiting in the wings with a cookie. No adult is in the frame, he isn’t pleasing anyone.

He just wants to help because work itself is irresistible.

Back when I was a day care teacher (during the punic wars) there was a backyard sand box for kids to play in that needed new sand. The landscape company agreed to give us a truckload of it for free but the told us we’d have to get it into the back ourselves. Not a problem. 60 kids with buckets and pails running up and down the stairs to move the sand into the back and it would happen soon enough.

Half way through the job I noticed that one soulfully quirky young boy had made many trips but seemingly without a pail. I could just feel something wasn’t right and asked what he was using to carry sand. He reached in his pocket and proudly showed a flowered plastic teacup from the practical life section. That five year old had been running back and forth down the stairs through the building and into the backyard with about a tablespoon of sand each time.

I put Art’s precious video on youtube just so you could watch in slow motion. Click on the cog and choose the “speed” option. .5 gives you a nice slow watch of this beavers effort. At slower speed I definitely get the feeling that when he tries to place the materials the second time he realizes something isn’t right.

He kind of just slinks away after that. As I’m sure we all would.