Elmer learned that Maggy descended from Pacific Northwest beaver royalty. Her mother served in the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) during the New Deal as one of the socialist beavers released into the wild to help rebuild ecology in Oregon and Washington watersheds stripped of vegetation. Her father volunteered for an elite unit of beavers that parachuted inside wooden crates into the remote back country of Montana. He, along with 2500 other beavers, chewed their way out of the crates when they landed and went to work restoring the health of wiped-out watersheds. Some 75 years later, Maggy met Ernie near a river extolled in a classic of Oregon literature that no one reads anymore, and they settled in, procreated, and earned a stellar reputation for kick ass dams and lodges.

As Maggy narrated, she nibbled on the rolled lily pads. At turns, she became wistful as only beavers can be.

Ernie died at the hands of a fiendish trapper who sold his pelts to a far flung furrier who sewed them into loincloths for a super model who modeled them in a magazine read by sociopaths. Maggy had received many offers for a new mate, but she rejected the suitors, preferring to remain alone rather than partnering with a mediocre beaver and damming watercourses with mediocre constructions. Maggy wanted excellence in love, life and architecture.

Maggy finished her story and asked Elmer about himself. He told her he didn’t really know who he was or where he’d come from. It was as if he had materialized out of the clouds. He just knew he loved the life of the beaver and the simple purpose and total anonymity it offered. He also loved chewing and gnawing trees and watching strange humans pick up the pieces he left behind.

“Why don’t you stay here in this lodge?” said Maggy “and we can hang out and get to know one another.”

Elmer looked at Maggy, the lodge, the cans of unopened porter. He could hear the stream crackling outside, flowing, flowing, running down, down, down to the ocean, and completing the eternal cycle (he still retained a tiny bit of Siddhartha) that began with evaporation, traveled upward to the clouds, fell to the land as rain, and then found its watery way to the great creator of all life. He sensed beavers were at one with this cycle in a way most humans were not—and never would be. Elmer also sensed that one day, beavers would (re)inherit the earth or at least what was once known as North America.

“That’s a wonderful idea,” said Elmer.

Maggy brought over two cans of porter and handed one to Elmer. They hoisted their cans to each other. Maggy punctured Elmer’s and Elmer punctured Maggy’s. They shotgunned them down and then embraced.

Summer turned to fall and rain began its reckoning with the Oregon Coast. James felt completely at home with rain. One day, he followed an elk trail that led to a lush meadow right out of fairy tale. He explored the meadow and discovered a beaver pond at one of its fringes. There was the lodge! The one right out of the pop-up book. James wasted no time and dove into the pond and began swimming toward the lodge. His strokes cut through the water, and as he swam, he heard a cacophony of curious slapping sounds coming from multiple directions.

A short distance from the lodge, James plunged underwater, and searched for the entrance. It didn’t take long and he wriggled into the opening, breathed sweet beaver air, and found himself inside a larger space than he’d imagined. It was a damn sight bigger and more comfortable than the studio dumps in Portland he had rented decades ago, the ones now going for $2000 a month.

James inspected the interior of the lodge. It was tidy and neatly decorated with built-in shelves displaying toy soldiers, Lord of the Rings action figures, lighters, fishing flies, shotgun casings, prescription pill bottles (lots of those!) and all other manner of river detritus. James also noticed a couple six packs of porter stacked in a corner. Something odd, however, struck James. The interior looked cared for but not lived in.

The call of a porter beckoned and James cracked one open, naturally shotgunning it in the process, and he soon felt drowsy, curled up and fell asleep.

James awoke to the sound of a shotgunned porter and beheld a beaver. He sat up.

“My name is Maggy,” said the beaver. “This is my lodge. What’s your name?”

James didn’t know, although he did understand her question. Something about entering the lodge had erased his human name and left his human language behind.

He tried out a new language with a stutter. “I d-d-d-d-don’t know my name,” he said.

“I’m going to name you Elmer,” she said, “Elmer the Beaver.”

Elmer didn’t protest. It’s not in a beaver’s nature. They flow.

“My husband Ernie and I used to live in this lodge,” said Maggy, “but he was killed by a trapper. All our kits have moved on and I’m living nearby in an old wooden fishing boat that I turned into a lodge.”

Elmer nodded.

“You want a beer?” said Maggy.

“Y-y-y-y-es,” said Elmer, staring at Judy. Those shoulders! Those brown eyes. Those long white white whiskers! Those sparkling orange buckteeth! She was foxy.

“You sound a little hick,” said Maggy laughing, handing him the can.

Elmer smiled that weird beaver smile, more of a smirk really. It’s hard to smile memorably if you only have four teeth, although many men and women in rural Oregon taverns manage to pull it off.

They clinked cans together and shotgunned the porters.

“I’d like hear more about you,” said Elmer. The stammer was gone. Shotgunning a porter is a great remedy for speech impediments, among other ailments.

“Sure,” she said. Beavers love telling stories and beavers never embellish. There isn’t any need.

They also don’t practice capitalism, enslave other creatures, truck with politicians, and are unpretentious vegans.

Maggy pulled a rolled lily pad from a cookie tin, mouthed it like a cigar, settled in, and began. Elmer listened and groomed his fur.

The transformation began subtly enough. One morning fording a creek, James realized the multitude of beavers in his life. There was his favorite childhood stuffed animal the cat used to hump. There was losing his virginity in a town called Beavercreek in a wooden lodge his high school girlfriend’s parents owned, and losing it on a rug stitched from beaver pelts that her father had trapped. There was even a taxidermied beaver mounted on the wall that surveyed the action! Then later, he dated a woman who lived in Beaver, Oregon and they once made love on a downed tree across another Beaver Creek.

Summer on the Oregon Coast induces laziness in the locals, but not for James. He built a lodge entirely of beaverwood not far from the Honda. He happily moved the little gear that remained into the lodge and set up a cozy little home for himself. He donated all the rest of his possessions except the clothes on his back to the animal care thrift store. The clothes were already threadbare, and when they finally unraveled, well, who needed clothes when you’re turning into a beaver.

James gave up making campfires. He stopped shaving, his hair grew out and dreaded, and groomed himself in the manner of riverine animals. He gave up all food except wild plants, foraging along the river, streams, intertidal areas and the nearby hills for sustenance. He ate better and more regularly than our boys at Valley Forge who subsisted on owl’s heads and and tree bark.

James liked his stouts and porters, and one day, the pull tab on a can wouldn’t open. James had a pocket knife at the ready to make a repair, but he cast the knife away and simply punctured the can with his front teeth and shotgunned the beer in the process. A porter never tasted so good.

Another day, James saw his reflection in a washed up Japanese float and noticed he’d lost all his teeth except two incisors on top and two on the bottom. They were orange in color.

For a few weeks that summer, James kept his phone charged and occasionally texted friends. But at one point, the phone slipped out of his pocket and into a stream and that was that.

James began taking short glides in the river at dawn and dusk. He was not alone. He knew beavers were out there, beavering in the side channels, the sloughs, the tributaries, building, building, building. He wanted to meet them. But how to initiate first contact? He still hadn’t found a suitable lodge to visit, although he had seen many dams. Where was it?

One afternoon, it occurred to James that he hadn’t spoken a word of English in weeks. It was later that afternoon that he was hiking along a stream and he stopped, knelt down, and begin gnawing at a low hanging alder branch. Soon it detached from the tree. James gathered up the branch. He began stripping its bark with his teeth. He bit into the inner bark. Oh sweet cambium! Two hours later, James had felled a dozen young alders and willows and was utterly gorged. He fell asleep in some sedge and dreamed of babbling brooks.