Today, we cover nearly 30 years of television in one fell swoop. Beavers didn’t make a shattering impact upon the small screen in general during this period, their participation in the medium being sporadic at best. One memorable feature project would also debut at the outset of this chronology, which is probably the best remembered of all of today’s entries. Other contributions include possibly their only appearances in claymation and stop-motion, a television ad campaign, and items from Jay Ward, King Features, Hanna-Barbera, and Film Roman.
One of the better-remembered of cartoon beavers was a well-animated and notably-voiced member of the species, nameless on the screen but among studio records affectionately known as Mr. Busy, who appeared as a featured co-star in a popular sequence from Disney’s Lady and the Tramp (6/22/55). He becomes the unlikely answer to an otherwise unsolvable dilemma for Lady, starting when Aunt Sarah, believing that Lady has attacked her pet Siamese cats Si and Am (although the whole thing is a frame up by the felines), takes Lady to a pet shop and has her fitted with a “good, strong muzzle”. Poor Lady can’t tolerate the cruel device, and reflexively runs from the shop, the muzzle and its trailing leash still fastened around her head. She immediately encounters more difficulty when the leash snags loose objects that clank loudly behind her upon the pavement, calling attention to herself, and the unwanted following of a pack of menacing stray dogs from the bad part of town. But Lady has an ally who also knows these dark streets like the back of his paw – the devil-may-care Tramp, another stray who knows how to handle any tough mutt that crosses his path. Hearing Lady’s plight, Tramp follows the progress of the chase, then doubles back by way of a shortcut to come up on the back side of a fence, just as Lady reaches the fence from the opposite side, finding her path blocked and herself cornered. With a mighty leap, Tramp vaults over the fence, landing directly between Lady and her vicious pursuers, and in canine fashion, snarls his most intimidating snarl at the pack, ready to take on three at one time to save the fair damsel. A violent battle of tooth and claw follows, some of its action denoted artistically through clashing shadows against the fence. When the rough stuff subsides, it is the three toughs who have turned tail and run, and a panting but defiant Tramp stands victorious.
But there’s still the problem of this confounded contraption strapped to Lady’s face. It’s beyond Tramp’s abilities to know how to remove it – but he thinks he knows of a place where they likely can find someone who can – the municipal Zoo. Going through the place from A to Z, Tramp quickly rules out the apes for assistance: “Too closely related to humans.” Alligators might perform the task, but there’s just too much teeth to dodge at the same time. “If anybody ever need a muzzle, it’s him.” Suddenly, a call of “Timber!” is heard, as a large tree falls around Tramp, narrowly missing direct impact from its branches. The cause is Mr. Busy, a zoo beaver constructing a dam within his own habitat. (Kind of advanced for most zoos. I don’t recall seeing any other where there is enough stream and lumber for a beaver to do the same kind of natural thing it does in the wild.) Well, “B” is the next letter of the alphabet (though in correct alphabetical order, Tramp should have checked out the bears first). So Tramp tries to get the toothy-fellow’s attention. “This will only take a second of your time”, proposes Tramp. But the beaver sees things from a different viewpoint. “Do you realize every second, seventy centimeters of water is wasted over that spillway?” (The beaver, voiced by Stan Freberg, is the first rodent of Disney’s to display a pronounced whistling lisp upon uttering “S” sounds, due to his buck teeth – allowing Freberg to have his fun with the read of this “S”-loaded line, much as “R”s provided audio-fuel for the dialogue of Elmer Fudd. Disney would remember this comical “speech impediment”, allowing it to be later inherited by Gopher for the production of “Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree”.) So the beaver is to busy to be bothered, insisting that the felled tree has got to be moved for use on the dam. “T’ain’t the cuttin’ takes the time – It’s the dog-gone hauling”, he complains. This gives the observant and prone-to-con-games Tramp an instant idea. What the beaver needs is “the new, improved, patented handy-dandy never-fail little giant log puller!” In delayed reaction, the beaver’s attention is finally aroused. “Did you say log puller?”
Tramp, instantly adapting to the role of a super salesman, draws Lady into the scheme, calling upon the beaver to observe the product, “modeled by the lovely little Lady”. He also prompts the slow-to-understand Lady to go along with the gag, giving her instructions in hawker’s spiel, “Turn around, sister, and show the customer the merchandise.” Then, the irresistible hook: “And it cuts log hauling time sixty-six percent!” Now the beaver can’t wait to see how it works. Tramp simply slips a loop of the leash around a tree limb, and indicates it is now ready to haul off. The beaver now asks to slip it on for size – but is stumped when he encounters the leather straps holding the device in place on Lady’s head. “How d’ya get the consarned thing off, Sonny?” asks the beaver. Simple. Place the strap between your teeth, and bite hard. One chomp, and Lady is free. Now Tramp is ready to depart, but the beaver still wants to talk business. “I’ll have to make certain it’s satisfactory before we settle on a price.” To the beaver’s surprise, Tramp has no interest in being mercenary – and tells him he can keep it. “I can?” reacts the beaver in surprise. Even more surprising is Lady’s response. Some of Tramp’s tactics are finally rubbing off upon her, and in spite of her ladylike ways, she chimes in, “Uh huh. It’s a free sample!” Tramp shoots her a glance with a beaming smile across his face, recognizing that this new kid to the shell game has got possibilities and potential. The beaver begins to thank the two – but never finishes his sentence, as one tug on the leash sends the fallen tree rolling down the slope of a hill, dragging the beaver along by the leash end. Down and down the lumber rolls, splashing into the stream and dunking the beaver, then floating slowly in the water to lodge directly within the last remaining hole in the dam, stopping the flow of water. Lady and Tramp watch from the hill crest, wondering what the reaction of their hapless patsy will be to this development. The beaver’s head rises from below the water, then turns to see his dam completed. He glances back at the dogs, and with a stream of water gushing from between his front teeth, joyfully remarks, “Say, it works swell!”
Likely the earliest animated beaver to be created for television was Bucky Beaver, the spokes-critter for Ipana Toothpaste (which sponsor, nearly two decades after its abandonment of the full-length theatrical commercial film, “Boy Meets Dog” at Walter Lantz, finally found its niche in animation spots). Produced by Walt Disney’s commercial animation division in conjunction with the run of “The Mickey Mouse Club”, these spots were particularly aimed at the kiddies, and featured the familiar voice of Jimmie Dodd, master of ceremonies of the Mouseketeers, as both narrator and in speeded-up form as the voice of Bucky. Dodd is definitely not among the ranks of fine animation voice actors, and hams up his role considerably. What’s more, despite changing for every commercial the locale and Bucky’s occupation, the spots suffer from what might be called the “Casper” syndrome – they are all the same, written in the same formula pattern, and never with any zingy or surprise punchlines. Bucky sings his signature jingle (composed no-doubt by Dodd), “Brusha, Brusha, Brusha”, and points as his bright-and-shiny buck teeth. A villainous human called Decay Germ appears, and threatens menacing cavities. A fight ensues, with Germ seeming to get the upper hand over Bucky. But Bucky pulls out an oversized tube of Ipana Toothpaste. Without even being brushed or sprayed with the stuff, and before Bucky can even remove cap from tube, Germ withdraws with the shout, “Oh, no, not Ipana!”, and ends up in whatever trap or immobilization Bucky wants for him. Bucky sings his jingle again, and the commercial ends. A string of three such commercials is presented below. It is unlikely you will want to see any more of them on the same day.
Tree Trouble (aka “Eager Beavers”) (Gumby, 10/26/56 – Art Clokey, dir.) – With the help of an excavation machine fresh out of the box from Tonka toys, Gumby and Pokey follow a treasure map they have stumbled across into the deep woods, in search of the third tree on the riverbank, indicated on the map to conceal an undisclosed treasure buried below. Their big digger soon begins chomping at the base of the tree, and lifts the whole trunk onto its conveyor belt – disturbing the slumber of Mr. Wise Owl in the branches above. “Who [or is it “Hoo”?] ever gave you permission to tear up my tree?”, the owl asks. Gumby is forced to admit, “Nobody”, and Pokey blurts out their following of the map to find treasure. “What is this forest coming to?” the owl mutters, and declares that what these two need is a good fable. He begins to relate the tale with a moral of Benjamin Beaver and his two cousins, Flory and Zeb. One day, the three decide to build a dam, with Ben drawing up the plans and acting as head engineer, while his cousins handle the manual labor of cutting the logs, positioning them in the dam, and tamping them down firmly with their tails. The owl asks if they obtained permission from anyone downstream for the project, but Ben tells him not to be such a fuddy-duddy. “I’m a beaver, and I know how to build this sort of thing.” The logs thus keep coming, as the project nears completion.
Downstream, Gumby (who just happens to show up as a player in the owl’s narrative) is hiking through the woods, and encounters a racoon “washing out a few things” from a limb of his tree home overlooking the river, and a rabbit in a nearby hole just to one side of the riverbed. Gumby asks if he can go swimming, and the racoon invites him to enjoy himself. But when Gumby enters the river, he notices something strange, just as the racoon asks his opinion of the stream. How come the water is disappearing? Within a few seconds, the water drops to below Gumby’s indented ankles, and the riverbed becomes bone dry. The racoon goes into a panic, wondering how he is ever going to keep up with his washing. Of course, it is no mystery to us why this strange phenomenon is occurring – Ben’s dam has just been completed. However, Ben’s design should have called for more mud to fasten the logs together securely. A swell builds up in the river, and the force of the water’s wave blasts through the center of the dam, sending a flash flood winding as a torrent downstream. “Wow-ee!”, utters a shocked Ben, his hat spinning around atop his head as he watches the disaster. The rabbit’s hole is flooded out. The racoon’s tree is swept away in the water, ending up toppled upon the opposite riverbank. And confused Gumby can only remark that this is the craziest river he’s ever seen. Spotting a rustic hand-carved rowboat also washed up on the banks by the flood, Gumby and the two dispossessed animals decide to row upstream to see what the cause of the chaos was. But before they get too far, the water level begins to fall once again, and dwindles to zero, leaving their boat beached in the mud, as its bow encounters the new cause – Ben and the boys have gone ahead and built another dam, to make things as good as new for themselves all over again.
Before Gumby and his two animal friends can raise a protest, another voice comes to their rescue. Ben’s father has come out looking for the three beavers. Asking what that thing is in the river, he is informed by the boys that it’s the dam they just built. Papa knows his ethics, and scolds them that they had no right to do such a thing without obtaining the other animals’ permission, and orders them to tear the thing down immediately, and be home in time for supper, or there’ll be a spanking for the three of them. So the fable closes, as the owl observes that the beaver boys were just a little too eager – eager beavers, you might say. Gumby and Pokey see the point of the story, and admit they got too eager themselves. “But what’s this about buried treasure?”, asks the owl. Pokey shows him the map, then notices that the tree trunk has not been replaced precisely in its original position, revealing a hollow area at its base. Pokey trots over to investigate its contents, but after a pause, dejectedly informs Gumby, “Nuts! It’s just a lot of walnuts!” From nowhere, a squirrel appears, angrily announcing, “It may be just nuts to you, but it’s MY treasure! Now go away!” Gumby and the owl begin to laugh, Gumby closing with the remark, “I guess the joke’s on us, Pokey.”
The Frogs and the Beaver (Jay Ward, Aesop and Son (from “Rocky and his Friends”) – date unknown) – You might call this one sort of a latter-day remake of Columbia’s “The House That Jack Built”. Aesop (Charlie Ruggles) spins a tale to go with his latest moral, “Honesty Is the Best Policy” – a moral prompted by his witnessing of the horrendous act of a baseball player “stealing” second base. An industrious beaver has built a stone and mortar resort house on the banks of a river. Two shiftless frogs (Romeo and Julius) decide they are tired of beavers always having it easy, while frogs have to settle for life on a lily pad, and conspire to take over the beaver’s home. With a can of the beaver’s yellow paint, Romeo splatters Julius with spots, then carries Julius inside, claiming Julius is a victim of frog pox. When Julius pretends to go into fits, the beaver, fearing Julius may be contagious, runs away, abandoning the house. The two frogs are as destructive home residents as the Columbia film’s uninvited house guests, and reduce the house to a shambles within a week. Meanwhile, at another spot on the river, the beaver has hastily constructed a new abode made of wood. With their present place in ruins, the frogs opt for comfortable rustic living, with a new plan. The beaver is observed smoking a pipe, so Julius poses as forest ranger Smokey the Frog, stomping upon and busting the pipe, then stomping upon the beaver when he discovers the beaver also carries a book of matches. The beaver again runs off, and in three days the frogs have reduced the cabin to another wreck.
Three days is all the beaver needs to build a Spanish-style hacienda of dried mud. The frogs show up right on cue, but before they can spring plan number 3, the beaver stomps out his own pipe, displays a coat of painted frog pox he has applied to himself under his shirt, and announces that he can no longer be intimidated. In fact, there is no further reason for intimidation – as he has not built this house for himself, but for the frogs! The frogs are shocked, but not so much that they don’t immediately take occupancy – which is just what the beaver has been waiting for. As a rainstorm moves in, the frogs discover that a structure made of dried mud can quickly change to one made of wet mud when not weatherproofed, causing the whole home to sag and slide off the banks into the river. The frogs are swept away with it in the current, and never seen again. Aesop Jr. has his own idea of a closing moral – Grime does not pay. Aesop chooses to stick to his own line, and carries off to the ball park a gift-wrapped base pad to replace the one stolen last week. Junior wonders what will happen if there is another game played, and someone steals home.
Beaver or Not (Rembrandt Films/King Features, Popeye, circa 1960 – Gene Deitch, dir.) – As frequently happened in the rushed production schedule and with the low budgets allocated to the King Features Popeyes, this episode is loaded with technical flaws. Poor animation (Popeye’s mouth painted on separate cels from his head, resulting in his speaking often giving the impression that his lips have been surgically disconnected from his jaw line), missed sound-effect cues (Popeye remarking that there must be a saw mill in the area, though we’ve heard no audible buzzing), overlapping tracks (obliterating some dialogue with music or effects), and even a credits sequence where, for possibly the only time in the series, the shots are spliced together in reverse order, revealing the title of the cartoon before the director or producer credits. Plotwise, it bears a resemblance to the later Bugs Bunny “Wet Hare”, while borrowing an ending from Andy Panda’s “Nutty Pine Cabin”.
Popeye is on vacation (or is that shore leave?) in backwoods country, paddling a canoe to a small dock at one end of a path leading up to his mountain cabin. The first thing he wants to do is take a swim. (Honestly, being a sailor, shouldn’t getting drenched in water be classified as something of a busman’s holiday?) He runs up to his cabin to change into bathing trunks (though continuing to wear his sailor hat), then runs down again to perform a cannonball dive into the river. In the short time that he has been away from the stream, he quickly learns that there ain’t no stream no more, diving face first into a muddy but empty river bottom. The sound of laughter, at the speed of the voices of Alvin and the Chipmunks, is heard from further upstream. Two beavers have just completed work upon a dam blocking up the river water, and are laughing themselves silly observing Popeye.
Popeye addresses the beavers, telling them they’ve had their fun, but this dam had got to go, as it is ruining Popeye’s vacation. Popeye begins tugging at a central log. Before he can dislodge it, one beaver chews through the log’s middle, detaching Popeye’s end of the wood. Popeye stumbles backwards, getting another dip in the mud. He makes another attempt to yank logs away, but the beavers add to their stack by felling a new tree, right upon Popeye’s head. Popeye tries a two-handled saw across the dam’s middle, but the beavers swim underwater on their side, grab the other handle, and hold it fast. Popeye’s end of the saw bunches up, then propels him backwards with the force of a coiled spring. Popeye falls with his head inside a hollow tree stump, disturbing an owl roosting within. Popeye turns to dynamite. The beavers are able to yank out the stick just in time, launching it upon one of the beaver’s tails back at Popeye. Popeye shoots into the air, then crashes through the bottom of his beached canoe on the way down. There’s only one thing to be done, and Popeye is going to do it. Eat spinach
Returning to the dam, he picks up the top log with the beavers still upon it, and tosses them off to one side. He is then able to lift the whole dam out of the river as a unit, allowing the river water to rush back into place, and Popeye’s swim to finally commence. On the banks, the beavers find themselves sitting on the ground, in close proximity to Popeye’s food knapsack from the canoe, and the empty spinach can. “What happened?” asks beaver #1. “He ate some of this stuff – and WOW!”, responds beaver #2, pointing to the can. Investigating the knapsack, another can is discovered – so the beavers decide to try it out themselves, one using his teeth as a can opener to get at the contents. They both chow down, and suddenly, one of the beavers is able to pick up the log upon his feet and juggle it, remarking at how that “stuff” makes you strong. Popeye spots the display of strength, and knows he’s in for trouble.
The beavers race up the hill toward Popeye’s cabin, and both of them gnaw at the largest tree adjacent to the cabin, until 90% of its base in eaten away, aimed to tip right upon Popeye’s residence. Popeye sees the disaster in the making, and zooms up the hill, taking his place in the notch carved by the beavers to keep the tree from falling. But this is just what the beavers wanted to keep Popeye occupied. They position themselves under the porch of Popeye’s cabin, and gnaw away the supporting pillars. The house slides down the hillside, landing with a thud tight in the river bed, creating a new ready-made dam just as Andy Panda’s beavers did. Popeye runs down the hill to survey the irreparable damage. (In a continuity inconsistency that seems more calculated to save on animation budget rather than to be a mere error, the tree Popeye has been supporting does not fall.) The beavers emerge out of the water on their side of the new “dam”, and invite Popeye to “Come on in. This is fun.” Popeye decides when you can’t beat them, join them, and ends the film by challenging the beavers to a swimming race to reach the opposite shore.
The Ballad of Smokey the Bear (Rankin-Bass, 11/24/66 – Larry Roemer, dir.), seems to be among the least-remembered, Rankin-Bass projects, despite following upon the heels of the success of “Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer” and using the same script writer and musical composer. Its primary problems seem to boil down to a lead character with minimal personality traits, and a more somber mood for its storyline. It would receive no return network screenings, and would take decades before receiving any occasional airing as a one-shot rerun on some small local station.
The film creates a new origin story for our hero, failing to follow any of the reputed reality of a ranger allegedly rescuing the cub from a fire and giving him his name and identity. It takes quite a bit of time to get to the point, following him as a young cub, exploring his first honey tree and first dose of bee stings, flirting with a girl cub named Delilah, and accidentally battering a beaver dam at her persuasion. The beavers (Joe, and his southern-accented wife Bea) display a bit of personality inconsistency in the course of the production. Bea begins the film more interested in picking berries than in Joe’s preoccupation of constructing a dam. Joe declares that she might be the first lazy beaver in history (if we don’t count the one who co-starred with Mighty Mouse). Along come Smokey and Delilah, with Delilah insisting she wants to go swimming. When Smokey is hesitant, Delilah pushes him in, then jumps in herself. The wave resulting from their splashing breaks off half the dam, sending it drifting downstream. The angry beavers (years before the series of the same name) pitch wood and rocks at the bears until they leave. Bea attempts to console Joe with the thought that they can start rebuilding tomorrow. But Joe reminds her of what they learned in beaver school – never put off until tomorrow what you can do today. Suddenly, Bea seems to become reformed, and begins actively assisting Joe in resuming construction, by gathering raw materials and passing them to him as he busily attaches them to the remaining half of the dam.
Dallying in returning to his cave, Smokey (not yet named, by the way), smells the unfamiliar scent of smoke, and sees the animals of the community running for cover. He is caught in a raging forest fire alone, and remembers his mother’s warnings to climb a tree when danger threatens. When his larger brother (voiced by James Cagney) searches the woods for him, he is forced to duck under rocks while the blaze passes, then emerges to find the trees charred and leafless, with one holding the singed but still very much alive Smokey clinging to its topmost limbs. Smokey (named by his brother for the smell left in his fur) is in shock, will at first not talk, and has to be carried home by his brother – only to find that Mom also went out looking for Smokey, and was lost in the conflagration. (Shades of Bambi!)
The mood of the tale thus remains definitely dark, with Smokey growing to young bearhood while keeping largely to himself, and only exchanging minimal words with his brother alone. One day, a new menace stomps into the forest – an escaped zoo gorilla, who stupidly leaves a path of destruction in his wake. The beaver dam is one of his first targets for senseless battering, leaving the beavers to discover the center third of their dam smashed and scattered within the river. Others also lose their homes or get brutally shoved around by the beast. The animals follow the beast’s tracks to locate him. Joe Beaver is reluctant to join the searching party, fearsome of what he might encounter and making excuses to work on the dam first and search tomorrow. Bea, who again seems to have seen the light, throws Joe’s own words back at him about not putting off things until tomorrow, in perhaps the best song of the show, a lively number delivered in her Southern twang entitled “Don’t Wait”. (It should be noted that by this point in the show, the presence of each of the songs seems almost an intrusion upon the story-telling, clashing notably with the otherwise serious mood of the plot, and feeling like they could only belong in an entirely-different light-hearted musical comedy. This is perhaps another key factor in why this special didn’t capture audiences.)
The beavers are featured in one more sequence, in which, after the ape is tracked to a deserted hunter’s cabin (where he recklessly dumps waste into the stream and even dabbles in smoking, presenting the danger of setting the regrown forest ablaze again), each of the animals of the forest are invited at a group protest meeting to work on their own ideas to capture the ape, in the hopes that if one idea fails, another will work. Of course, not only do many fail, but others cross-up each other. The beavers gnaw a large tree’s trunk to the near snapping point, then set out a smelly dead fish as bait, tied to one of the branches. Their hope is that the ape will pull at the rope to which the fish is tied, tugging the tree down atop himself. The ape, however, is repulsed by the smell of the fish (though Joe believed the smell would either make him hungry or resemble his own scent so much, he’d think it was a visiting relative), and leans against the tree trunk instead of pulling at it. The tree falls upon the dam, smashing it again. Ultimately, when everyone’s plans fail, loner Smokey becomes convinced in his worries over the possible fate of the trees to take matters into his own hands, and batters down the door and front wall of the cabin. The collapse of the structure sets off a fire from the fireplace wood within, and traps the gorilla under fallen logs of the roof. Smokey forms a bucket brigade from the other animals, succeeds in having the fire doused, and uses a spade found in the cabin’s rubble to bury and stamp out the final embers. He also frees the gorilla from his log imprisonment, and becomes friends with him without a spoken word, coaxing the ape to walk with him paw in paw, and be led back to the zoo. Upon learning of his heroic battling of the beast and the fire, the Forest Service sends him his signature hat and shovel, and appoints him chief animal ranger of the forest. And thus, the legend is forged.
Hanna-Barbera’s Wacky Races included one of the rare beavers to score a regular berth in a TV series – Sawtooth, a beaver in a yellow racing helmet, who served as assistant to driver Rufus Ruffcut, a burly lumberjack who piloted The Buzzwagon (#10), a makeshift hot rod constructed of lumber and an ample supply of sawblades. Unfortunately, Sawtooth possessed negligible personality and almost as minimal screen time, serving more as a riding mascot rather than an assistant (just as Blubber Bear did in the competing Arkansas Chugabug) and having no dialog script. Most of the time he would just facially react if he was lucky. Once in a blue moon, he would get to do something, like industriously hammer back together loose boards on the Buzzwagon (accidentally hammering a nail into Rufus’s rear end), or gnawing Rufus a custom-made baseball bat out of a whole tree (lifting a gag from “Baseball Bugs”). He and Rufus did not “make the cut” for the Wacky Races reboot of 2017.
After what seems to be a long hiatus for the species, we get Garfield in the Rough (Film Roman, 10/26/84). This may not be an ideal Garfield special. Perhaps a few too many tunes. Perhaps overly-dramatic in places. But it was trying for something a little different – and still manages to deliver a goodly share of laughs and memorable verbal zingers. It begins in Wizard of Oz fashion, with black-and-white imagery, and a disclaimer not to adjust your TV set, as all the color has temporarily gone out of Garfield’s life. That goes for Jon too, who is so bored, he collapses on his face at the breakfast table. With his face still plastered on the tabletop, he mumbles that maybe it’s time they take a vacation. Garfield brightens, pulls up the windowshade, and the world turns to color once again. But where? Garfield fantasizes about jaunts to a tropical island, or maybe Mexico – each dream featuring a beautiful feline native or Senorita to woo. Then Jon drops the bombshell – they’re going camping. Not bad – if you’re in the mood for tolerating the insects, the dampness, the poor food, lack of a litter box – which Garfield definitely isn’t.
Garfield wants to pack half the house for the trip, including the TV set and a 200 mile extension cord. Jon leaves it all behind. The Arbuckle caravan of Jon, Garfield, and Odie arrives at the park grounds of Lake Wobegon. A ranger at the gate asks, “Is this your cat?’, then responds to Jon’s affirmative, “My condolences.” Garfield claws at the ranger from out the car window. Jon asks if there are any bears, and is informed that the park’s most ferocious animal is a beaver with a bad disposition. Our trio set up camp, with a waterproof tent guaranteed to sleep 3 – however, it looked much larger in the photo, and is barely large enough for Jon alone to shimmy into, as tight a fit as toothpaste in a tube. To make matters worse, our heroes hear an announcement on the radio of the escape from the zoo of a vicious black panther – scaring the life out of Garfield, but not Jon, who jumps to the conclusion that the panther has to be miles from here. Unaware, or course, that the beast is lurking in the shadows, eyeing them with its glowing yellow eyes.
Overnight, the food supply Jon has packed for a week’s rationing disappears. Garfield has declared it his midnight snack – except for the eggs, which dirty old egg-sucking dog Odie beat him to. Garfield dashes into the woods to lay low until Jon’s wrath dies down. He is finally struck with a begrudging admiration of the beauty of nature in the wild, but then remembers that wild things also live in the forest, and begins to imagine himself as next target for being eaten. Thus, when he chances to encounter a harmless rabbit, Garfield shrieks, flops on the ground, and begs for his life. A beaver walks up from the other direction. “What do you make of it, Dicky?”, asks the rabbit to the beaver. “Beats me, Billy”, responds the beaver. “Maybe he’s gotten into some fermented jujubeans or somethin’.” Garfield finally figures out, with some embarrassment, that these supposed-hostile animals are herbivores, and brushes himself off, declaring that you can’t be too careful in the wild. The rabbit suggests he’s been watching too many jungle pictures. But Garfield mentions the report about the panther – which sends both of his forest friends ducking for cover behind a log at his very mention. The beaver is the only one who’s seen it, just for a moment, as it turned its yellow eyes upon him while he was in the stream – and stared right through his soul. Now a rustling in the brush is heard. Garfield prepares to face the beast in a unifed front with his new friends – until he looks back to find they have deserted him and vanished. Garfield jumps into a hollow stump, and feels a tongue making contact with his fur. But panthers don’t lick. It is only Odie, slurping him through a knothole. Garfield tells Odie they’ve got to go back to camp and warn Jon.
Jon is still in camper’s euphoria, and fails to heed Garfield’s desperate efforts to tug him away, back to the car. Suddenly, with slow stealth, the panther makes its move from out of the brush, closing in with deliberate paces. Jon shouts to his pets to scatter. Garfield scrambles to climb up a tree. Jon ducks into his miniature tent, but the panther tears apart the canvas with one slash of its paw. Jon runs, gathering up Odie, and races for the car, locking the door. But he can’t leave without Garfield. The panther appears at the window, first clawing at the glass, then attacking it with powerful swipes of his paw, finally breaking through. The panther reaches a paw inside, slicing away a large portion of Jon’s shirt. Garfield watches in horror from the limb above – then, something snaps inside him. Garfield’s teeth clench in a jagged snarl. His claws emerge. And he leaps down upon the back of the big cat. The panther jumps around with an unwanted passenger clinging fast to his back, but finally succeeds in throwing Garfield like a bucking bronco. Garfield lies on his back, pinned against a rock face, as the panther’s attention switches to him, and he slowly moves in for the kill. At that moment, a shot rings out. The rangers have tracked the beast, scoring a direct hit upon him with a tranquilizer dart. The panther seems to collapse, inches short of his target – then opens his eyes again, placing his mighty paw atop Garfield’s chest – only to fade again, and pass out in a deep sleep. Garfield turns to the camera, and comments, “Nice touch.” The rangers are happy to find everyone is okay, and remark that it was a good thing they didn’t show up a second later. Garfield, in his silent pantomime and unheard dialog, attempts to boast to blow up out of proportion his own unexpected instinctive heroism, claiming that he simply would have turned on his inner ferocity to finish off the beast. “When the tough get going, the going gets tough…” Well, something like that, as Garfield spends the whole trip home trying to work out the correct words to the phrase.
• “Garfield in the Rough” is on Dailymotion.
NEXT TIME: We should be able to find material to “chew” upon for at least one more week.
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