Guess What I Found

Today, one of my coworkers cleaned beneath the reference desk, and judging by the size of the dust bunnies, this probably hasn’t been done since our renovations, which were so long ago, we need more renovations.

Stowed away where our legs usually crash painfully into things that we don’t even question, she found some expected items. Among them were empty hand sanitizer containers, discarded scraps of paper, a receipt, a Yalsa poster from three years ago, and a cool pen that someone likely hid for their own personal use and forgot about. None of this amazed us. In fact, I expected more.

There were a few mild surprises like the Easter basket, a sticky and decomposing stress ball made to look like the earth, and a movie poster for Talladega Nights. At one point she found a peanut and threw it in the trash, so I spent a while singing the song. Go ahead and sing it. I’ll wait.

…

Okay, that’s enough.

Then my brave coworker, who was down on her hands and knees, so far under the desk that I could only see her bottom half, whipped out the thing that had me in stitches for the rest of the night.

Covered in filth, barely recognizable, she slammed a small, hairy thing onto the desktop and demanded to know what the hell it was.

I turned it around in my hands and immediately started laughing. She found a beaver.

We had a hand-sized, stuffed beaver beneath our desk.

And it was so filthy! Clearly, someone was neglecting their beaver.

I started laughing like a schoolgirl and I could not stop. However, since the only other person on staff who I can count on to laugh at stupid dirty jokes with me is our director, and he was long gone for the day, it was just me, bouncing up and down in my chair, laughing about a dirty beaver being found by my coworker.

Our new security guy, Arms, walked over and I was squirming in my seat, trying to control the laugh and said, “Look! Look what she found! A beaver. A poor, neglected beaver,” and I burst into laughter.

Without missing a beat he said, “Come again?”

With that I was grabbing my guts and falling out of my chair.

I looked at him hopefully and said, “There are so many jokes! So many! And I can’t say any of them!”

He just looked at me with sympathy and nodded.

One of the high-school-aged shelvers was standing there the entire time and she said, “I don’t get it. It’s a beaver. So what?”

Arms said, “You’re too young.”

I said, “This is something you’re better off not getting.”

Arms agreed and walked away.

For the remainder of the night, whenever Arms saw me, he would grab the nearest staff member and say, “You know what they have hidden over at the Adult Reference Desk? A BEAVER!” I would bust out laughing, he would smile and walk away, and the poor, unsuspecting coworker would stand there looking irritated and ignorant.

That’s right, folks. An unfortunate librarian who had to have preceded us, lost her unloved and unused beaver. It’s been collecting dust and cobwebs, buried beneath many layers of protective stuff, only to be discovered many years later. We can’t possibly know who this beaver belongs to, but for sure I have my theories. Which I shall not share. And given that this beaver has likely spent her life unused, unloved and so far from the light of day that we feared for her stability under the fluorescents, we felt that a fitting place for her, to balance out her life, was to proudly sit upon the shelf above our desk as the Mascot of the Month. Finally, this beaver is going to be appreciated as she should have been.

And I swear, the first person who walks up to my desk and says, “Nice beaver,” will have to call 9-1-1, for I will be dead from laughter.