Unfortunate Tidings

Cheryl Reynolds called this afternoon to let Heidi and me know she had discovered a kit floating in the pond near the dam. Cheryl contacted Lindsay Wildlife Museum to let them know we had lost one of the beavers and this evening a volunteer is conveying the body to UC Davis to be necropsied. Sorry to be the bearer of such sad tidings; we’ll update as soon as we hear anything.

Linda

Just got home and heard the news, we made it all the way to February with our 2008 models. Sigh, I was hoping we were home free. The kit was 30 lbs, with no obvious signs of injury or damage. Cheryl did an amazing job connecting with the right people, taking it herself out of the water and off to Lindsay. Thank you so much for giving our little guy the care it deserves. We’ll let you know when we know….Heidi

Christine McLauglin is the garden columnist for the Examiner and a Master Gardener herself. She recently worked on a beaver column for Suite101 which I think I told you linked to us as a further source of information. Well now she’s also the wildlife columnist for the Examiner so she wrote this about the creek seekers contest yesterday:

The San Francisco Estuary Project and River of Words presents, “The Creek Seekers: Exploring East Bay Creeks Contest”.

Go read the story, and notice the “insert stock beaver photo here” part. I wrote her that we could get her some realllllllly amazing worth a dam photos and her stories could have a truly unique and local flaire. She was very excited about that idea.

One of my favorite Cheryl Reynolds photograph is this early glimpse of a new 2008 kit. I still can’t believe how little they were.

By the way, the title is a reference to a famous (apocryphal?) line from the notorious Algonquin table…challenged to use the word “horticulture” in a sentence the brilliant Dorothy Parker quipped

“You can lead a horticulture, but you can’t make her think”. I‘ve always been in awe of it.