as busy as a beaver

He must have been busy as a beaver during his fleeting school days.

Papen, busy as a beaver, was working daily on the old man.

"He was busy as a beaver flying all over the world, the international businessman, getting it all done.

From breakfast until noon he was busy as a beaver repairing the washout beneath the car and on to the top of the hill.

(Beavers are monogamous for life, so what is all this about being busy as a beaver?)

I wonder, though, how many readers know that castor is the French word for beaver, referring to the homeowner being "busy as a beaver"?

'Busy as a beaver.'

One thinks of maxims such as "busy as a beaver" and attributes such as "industrious" when confronted with this imposing mascot, but our actual school motto was the Latin "Mente et Manu," "the mind and the hand."