Some folks had noticed that he didn’t seem himself, but he was reworking the old gags, attempting to get back on top of the game, working at being the old daredevil again.
It seemed like such a good idea to dance the Watusi while providing his own percussion via pyrotechnic farts on center ice during a game between the Canadiens and the Maple Leafs.
Unfortunately things didn’t work out so well.
It appears that Canadians are really, really serious about hockey. It seems that games between the Canadiens and the Maple Leafs (why not Leaves?) are especially serious, involving years of rivalry and learned mutual antagonism. Finally it seems that there is a deep-seated, possibly genetic, bias against beavers among Canadian hockey players (probably because beavers still have their teeth).
Things started out rough, the band flubbed the entry music and the crowd growled in the tone that only old skunky Labatt’s can induce.
Events went rapidly downhill. Beaver got called for icing and it counted against Montreal. Then he accidentally checked a Toronto lineman into the boards.
They started circling like Mongol horse archers and while circling they somehow managed to sharpen their skates at the same time. It was frightening situation, but not beyond salvation.
They finally closed in upon him when he mistakenly said he “hated plaid tuques.“
As a last chance at saving himself from the stretcher boards and hoops he uttered a hurried “the Arctic trails have their secret tales, that would make your blood run cold,” but it was too late to be saved by quoting Robert Service.
They grinned their maniacal toothless grins the whole time.
So much for compassionate Canadians . . ..
Angry Beaver is dead. Angry Beaver. Properly named Castor canadensis iratus he was born too late and died too soon.
He was a creature who loved the outdoors . . . and bowling, and sex, and power, and sitting around the kitchen table talking over a few bottles of wine. As a surfer he explored the beaches of Southern California, from La Jolla to Leo Carrillo and . . . up to . . . Pismo. He enjoyed the pinnacles of fame, the slings and wheelbarrows of outrageous fortune; he bore the whips and scorns of time, the pangs of despised love and the law’s delay. His voice was ever soft, gentle, and low, an excellent thing in a beaver. We can all take comfort that up until the end he was utterly himself.
In accordance with Castor canadensis iratus’s imagined dying wishes, the commune will commit Angry Beaver’s mortal remains to the bosom of the Pacific Ocean, which he loved so well (though this didn’t stop him from locating the commune in Montana).
He leaves behind him his family, friends, peeps, and commune members: Happy Dog!, the Peeps sisters, Reynard, Red Pixie, Blanche Descartes, Sorry the Dog, Rat, the Rabbits awaiting his call, the Chickens, the Bendy® Horses, the Cows, the Sheep, the Sheep-Chickens, the Chicken-Sheep, the Humans (so many humans) and a bevy of creditors.
To cheat the creditors, the Cascadian Commune requests that donations in the memory of Angry Beaver be made to The Community Warehouse (or to the Shuffle Inn Bar to pay down the outstanding tab because they all still want to drink there).
Here rests his head upon the lap of Earth
A Youth, to Fortune and to Fame unknown;
Fair Science frown’d not on his humble birth,
And Melancholy mark’d him for her own.
Large was his bounty, and his soul sincere;
Heaven did a recompense as largely send:
He gave to Misery all he had, a tear,
He gain’d from Heaven, ’twas all he wish’d, a friend.
No farther seek his merits to disclose,
Or draw his frailties from their dread abode,
(There they alike in trembling hope repose,)
The bosom of his Father and his God.
-Thomas Gray
Upon completion of the services, Reynard will sell the Crate & Barrel Bamboo Bread Box Church (Just the Right Size for the Daily Bread of Any Faith!) SOLD by Happy Dog at a ridiculously low price.
45.541970
-122.648613
