Busy Beaver

"Your shift is over." "Aw, dam it!"

We are the busy busy beavers!
We set things right
after the fight,
when time is tight,
'cause the next flight
is nigh!

—"Busy Busy Beavers," Super Animal Royale Tonight

Among rodents, there are dirty rats, Nice Mice, Screwball Squirrels, and Suicidal Lemmings. This is the busy, hard-working beaver. They are usually shown building a dam as in real life but can be building other kinds of structures.

It should be worth noting that beavers build dams and lodges to avoid predators (such as bears, wolves, and cougars). They build dams to block the water flow and build ponds so they can build their lodges in the middle of these ponds. These lodges have underwater access and the den itself is inside and above water. These lodges keep the beavers warm and the beavers also build bunkers to protect themselves from predators (even if they aren't around). They instinctually make these structures as soon as they hear running water.

A beaver that is a Funny Animal might also have a job as a construction worker, carpenter, or architect because these jobs are reminiscent to beavers' real life habit of building dams, but it isn't unheard of for them to be in other jobs associated with hard work, or being overachievers in a more generic job.

Beavers are also Canada's national animal because of their hardworking and diligent nature... although a not-inconsiderable number of Canadians live in areas where the terrain is such that they really wish the beavers weren't quite so enterprising.

Since beavers are seen as wise and cunning by using trees and their branches to build dams^note In truth, beavers' dam-making abilities are in no way indicative of intelligence any greater than most other animals — pure instinct drives them to do it, and they can be misled (such as by playing a recording of running water nearby one) into making a dam even without actual water around them, this can overlap with Resourceful Rodent.

Note: This trope isn't adding every instance of a beaver in media. Only add examples of beavers or characters with a beaver motif who fit the trope of being diligent, hard-working, or busy.

See Diligent Draft Animal for farm animals and draft animals portrayed as hardworking. Virtuous Bees are usually similarly busy. Compare Semi Aquatic Species Sailor, Mole Miner, Boxing Kangaroo, Firehouse Dalmatian, and Fighting Panda for other job-related stereotypes relating to animal species (and Animal Occupation Stereotypes for miscellaneous examples). Contrast Cats Are Lazy, Sluggish Sloths, Laid-Back Koala, and Sluggish Seal for animals that are portrayed as the opposite of hardworking. Subtrope of Proud Industrious Race, which covers all cases where a species, race, or society's thing is hard work and industriousness.

---

Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Digimon Adventure: (2020): One episode features a Digimon named Junkmon, who is essentially a robotic beaver who lives alongside other Digimon in a volcanic island. Junkmon is an avid and nigh tireless hard worker, being in charge of and directing the other Digimon on building barriers to deal with lava flow should the volcano erupt.
• Kemono Friends: Episode 5 of Season 1 is about helping American Beaver build a house.

Films — Animated

• The King and the Beaver is an animated short directed by students from the Gobelins animation school. It is about a drifting king who decides to hire a hard-working beaver as the constructor of a big wooden castle.
• Lady and the Tramp: The zoo beaver, Mr. Busy, is very occupied with cutting down trees and building a dam in his habitat. Tramp tricks him into removing Lady's muzzle and leash by telling him it's a pulley that will make his work more efficient.
• Open Season: The first film includes a bunch of beavers working on a dam with the precision of human construction workers. They even have a lift and pulley system and lunch breaks.
• Sing: During the auditions scene, a beaver sings the line "working nine-to-five" from Dolly Parton's song "9 to 5".
• Zootopia: In one scene, Judy walks straight into a patch of wet cement, where a sidewalk is being made. The construction workers doing the job are all beavers.

Literature

• Animorphs: The cover of Book 47 depicts Jake turning into a beaver, and the book itself centers on a battle to protect the Hork-Bajir valley. The team all morph beavers and join a pair of regular beavers to create supersized beaver dam, which they then smash to kill the Yeerks with a Giant Wall of Watery Doom.
• The Berenstain Bears: In The Berenstain Bears and the Eager Beavers, the bear family learns that their neighbor Mr. Skunk has moved away. In his place were a family of beavers who are hard workers.
• In both the novel and film of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, Mr. and Mrs. Beaver are this, as Mr. Beaver is the one who leads the Pevensie children to safety and he and his wife plan their trip to see Aslan.
• James Michener features one of these in his book Centennial (in a segment later reprinted in Creatures of the Kingdom as "The Beaver"), a female beaver who chooses a spot in the river with a preexisting rock tunnel and cave (and existing exits further inland) to build her own lodge and dam, despite the fact that the area is prone to flooding and washing away all her hard work every spring. Each and every time it does, she diligently rebuilds it, and teaches her offspring to do the same, over the objections of her mate. Said mate is a subversion — he would rather relocate to a different place that doesn't require so much work every year, and leaves most of the building to her in any case, which is part of why she refuses to move away.
• The entire Redwall series only includes a single unnamed beaver in the first book, but he's shown to be a very hard worker and a sort of military engineer, helping Constance the badger to construct a giant crossbow.

Live-Action TV

• Grimm: One of the Wesen species is the Eisbiber, or "Beaver", depicted as a hard-working laborer, usually involved in plumbing or construction trades. The recurring character Bud, a plumber who accidentally discovered his customer was the Grimm protagonist, was terrified at first, but eventually became an ally and helper.
• Veronica Mars: Cassidy Casablancas is known as "Beaver" (a nickname he hates) in order to theme-name him with his brother Dick. He's also a Teen Genius who ends up running a multi-million dollar property empire at the age of sixteen while going to high school and murdering a lot of people through convoluted methods, framing other people for his crimes, and generally being The Chessmaster of Season 2.
• Zoobilee Zoo: Bill Der Beaver, a beaver who's a builder, handyman, and inventor.

Puppet Shows

• Dutch children's television series De Fabeltjeskrant features Ed and Willem, two hard-working beaver brothers.

Video Games

• Against the Storm: Beavers are one of the villager species. They specialize in woodworking and enjoy engineering. They are also very hardy, matching Humans for base Resolve, and as such will be among the very last villagers to abandon your settlement if things go bad.
• In Bear & Breakfast, Tony, who teaches Hank carpentry, is a beaver who's an expert in woodwork.
• Chipper & Sons Lumber Co.: The player takes the role of Tyke the beaver, newly employed at his father's lumber business, as he harvests trees, sells wood, and helps out the family business any way he can.
• Jimmy and the Pulsating Mass: Jimmy meets Mr. Beaver, a workaholic architect who lives in the town of Smile. He prides himself on his ability to make buildings that are bigger on the inside. Late in the game, he disappears to work on the Ultimate Construction, a ramshackle tower designed to be his magnum opus.
• Pokémon: According to the Pokédex, the beaver-like Bibarel are industrious workers, with rivers that are blocked off by their dams never overflowing.
• Przygody Reksia: Near the beginning of Captain Nemo, Kretes has to climb the Eiffel tower without disturbing some worker beavers.
• Super Animal Royale: In the lore (such as in one episode of Super Animal Royale Tonight), a crew of hard hat-and-safety vest-wearing beavers —- complete with Job Song and Weird Trade Union — is shown to be responsible for putting the island right in between royales.
• Timberborn is a game in which you play as beavers building their own cities and civilization after humanity falls.

Web Animation

• Happy Tree Friends: Handy the beaver is often seen trying to work in construction. Emphasis on the word "try", as his lack of hands usually deters him from actually building anything, although he has built a few things on his own, like an entire house once.

Western Animation

• Barney Bear:
  • In The Bear and the Beavers, Barney encounters a couple of beavers while chopping trees for firewood, while the beavers themselves are chopping trees for wood. Barney follows the beavers to their home, where he sees a whole colony of beavers all chopping wood and building dams.
  • In Busybody Bear, Barney decides to help out one of his neighbors, a beaver who is trying to construct a dam in a river nearby. Barney's help turns out to be more of a nuisance for the beaver.
• Courage the Cowardly Dog: Taken to detrimental extremes in the episode "A Beaver's Tale". The eponymous Beaver of the episode ends up building a massive dam that floods the town of Nowhere, which Courage must fix. The Beaver reveals its obsessively building the dam to please his Fantasy-Forbidding Parent of a father who quashed his dream of being a jazz musician over being hardworking construction worker like him. Eventually Courage teaches him to follow his dreams and the Beaver destroys the dam to follow his musical dreams.
• Donald Duck: In the cartoon "Old Sequoia", Donald is a park ranger tasked with protecting a treasured tree from a couple of beavers that resemble Chip and Dale who want to chop it down.
• On Franklin, Beaver is generally the most studious of the group in school, and also active in a number of activities and sports. However, special points to go to her father, Mr. Beaver, who not only is typically busy with something himself, but will as a rule put others to work if he sees them idle.
• Krypto the Superdog: One episode had a group of beavers working on a plan to Take Over the World. Their leader turned out to be an alien who just looked like a beaver and got a bunch of actual beavers to follow him.
• Legends of Chima: Exaggerated — the Beaver Tribe loves working and fixing so much that it considers taking vacations a form of punishment.
• Looney Tunes:
  • The Merry Melodies short "The Eager Beaver" presents a double subversion. As the narrator informs us of how busy beavers are, the camera pans to a group of beavers napping on the ground next to a bunch of trees. When the narrator gets their attention, they immediately get to work and remain busy chopping trees and constructing a dam for the remainder of the short. The titular "eager beaver" is excited to get to work building the dam, but has a difficult time finding a tree that isn't already being chopped down by another beaver.
  • Silly Symphonies: "The Busy Beavers" revolves around an entire colony of beavers working together to chop down trees and build a dam.
• Molly of Denali: "Busy Beavers" centers around a family of beavers building a dam that diverts water into Trini's garden.
• My Friends Tigger & Pooh: Beaver is usually busy with something or other, whether it's chewing on a tree or building something. He even has his own Job Song about how working is seemingly all he does.
• The Simpsons: Parodied in "Mother Simpson" (07x08). Despite Lenny's expectations ("Oh look, those helpful beavers are swimming out to save him"), a group of beavers attacks and rips off the pants of Homer's dummy. This is further reinforced by the following edition of the Springfield Shopper, which headline reads "LOCAL MAN LOSES PANTS, LIFE — Beaver Rescue Falls Short".
• Timon & Pumbaa: The recurring character Boss Beaver is a beaver who is often working in construction, whose hard-working attitude is the antithesis to the duo's "no worries, no responsibilities" mentality.

---