His teeth, too, were perfect, his four orange- 
colored incisors forming a self-sharpening set of 
chisels that could fell any tree suited to his 
purpose; or strip from its branches the bark, 
which his sixteen powerful molars quickly re¬ 
duced to a pulp ready for digestion. 
Although it was now the first of May, the 
season had been so retarded that O-Go still 
retained most of his soft underfur; but much 
of the layer of fat, which had underlain his skin 
at the beginning of the winter, was by now 
absorbed. It had gone to make up for the sim¬ 
plicity of a diet limited to the bark of sticks 
fetched by him from the storage pile. Later 
in the year, O-Go would weigh four or five 
pounds more, but his fur would have lost, 
for the time being, much of its rich beauty. 
Ela and her mate lived at the old home lodge, 
along with Father and Mother Beaver; but 
O-Go and Ilg no longer stayed there. They had 
left home a year ago, when their new brother 
and sisters had arrived, and they had not re¬ 
turned. Ilg made his home permanently at the 
lodge of Uncle Castor. O-Go, too, was stay¬ 
ing there for the present, though he had a lodge 
of his own, to which he would soon return. 
It was a good thing that Ilg had never mated, 
for he was that rare type, a lazy beaver. He 
seemed never to feel any desire to cut down 
big trees; to clear away underbrush, in order 
145 
