Thank your local wildlife worker day

heidi08 Beavers elsewhere, Beavers or Social Ambasadors, Creative Solutions May 13, 2009

When’s the last time you thanked the volunteers at the hundreds of wildlife rescue sites around the world who are crazy busy this time of year feeding baby everythings? My parents used to to to church with a woman who did the vetrinary care for Tri County wildlife, and she would often come to mass with a baby raccoon or jackrabbit that needed to be fed so often it couldn’t be left alone. Our own Cheryl Reynolds is now a volunteer at the International Bird Rescue and Research Center, and just put pictures of some baby owls she rescued on her web page.

And then there’s this:

Everyone is wild for the two newest additions: 2 baby beavers. The one in the movie above is getting fed on his back wrapped in a towel, by bottle just like our own kids. Below is the sibling of the one getting fed, hanging out in a tank with a stuffed Beaver Mommy. See his little flat tail?…Just yesterday I was at the Wildlife Rehab Center and had a first with The Beavers. I’ve never even seen one until 2 weeks ago, and in that time I filmed THIS little movie of them drinking from a bottle (You MUST click that link to watch, if you haven’t seen it!). To my great delight, a few days later I myself was feeding them. And yesterday I got to “swim” them…. meaning we fill up the large utility sink off the kitchen and put them in so they can get used to swimming. Had I been thinking, I would have gotten THAT on video.

Adventures in Nature

Her parting words in the entry? “Who knew Beavers were this cute and… human?“

Ahhhh, we did of course.

On a different note, our beaver friend Ian Timothy needs your finger clicking help, and would very much appreciate it if you could visit his claymation entry into the “Morph” contest, and vote for him by rating his video. He’s currently in second place, and the winner gets a treat from the original artist who created Morph. We want to encourage this 14 year old wonder to go on and do amazing films that help beavers everywhere, so give him two minutes and go here.

And finally, guess who’s “going to Medford” tomorrow to fix that pesky beaver problem?

Self identifation in Nature

heidi08 Educational, Environmental May 28, 2009

maggie and milly and molly and may
went down to the beach (to play one day)

and maggie discovered a shell that sang
so sweetly she couldn’t remember her troubles,and

milly befriended a stranded star
whose rays five languid fingers were;

and molly was chased by a horrible thing
which raced sideways while blowing bubbles:and

may came home with a smooth round stone
as small as a world and as large as alone.

For whatever we lose(like a you or a me)
it’s always ourselves we find in the sea

ee cummings

There is so much to say about this poem and how it applies to the sleepy awakening of interest in the other that comes from our first awareness of nature. Even though we are surrounded by people, I’m fairly sure we begin life uncertain whether or not they are really only aspects of ourselves. This isn’t really so surprising since we start out our existence as a piece of someone else. It takes a while to be sure of boundaries and territories.

From day one though, we know the butterfly in the garden is not ourselves, and the bubble-blowing crab that chases us at the beach is “other”. This is an essential fact of our awakening lives. The natural world is impervious to our cries and resists our powerful language, and this makes it “outside”, “other” and “in relation to”. This means that every hour we spend watching bugs in the grass or birds in their nests or (beavers building dams), we are confronting the murky edges of self, the limits of what we control and influence, and the monumental and heartbreaking awareness of our own “finite-ness”; of our own death.

We do not go on forever. We cannot control everything. We are a piece of the world but not all of it. These are hard lessons that our parents alone cannot possibly teach us.The natural world can.

I was thinking about this last week when I heard of a concept being developed for a summer program centered around the estuaries and tailored for children on the “spectrum” of autism and asperger’s disorder. The idea is to gradually focus the child’s interest in the relationships of living things, and to link that awareness to a greater sense of community. Of course I thought about the way these particular beavers in this particular watershed helped me find so much of my own voice, and made me aware of so much I had never heard or thought. I thought about them being a part of Martinez’ estuary, and soundly confronting the “autistic” view of the council, who seemingly had absolutely no expectation or awareness of the enormous public response their actions would generate.The beavers introduced me to people I would never have met, and I dare say they introduced the council to a host of people they might rather have never met. I’m thinking Alhambra creek has helped treat our autism, but Martinez still has a ways to go.

For whatever we lose(like a you or a me)
it’s always ourselves we find in the sea

Yes, Virginia. They can have sandy paws…

heidi08 Educational, Friends of Martinez Beavers July 7, 2009

One of most the delightful moments at the Wild Birds Unlimited fair was an approach from a retired teacher named Virginia, who stood patiently while I was talking to someone else and silently waited with a furry beaver puppet on her hand. She explained that her (3rd grade?) elementary classroom had been the “busy beavers” and that a parent who hand made puppets had made her the beaver original.

Now I’m a big fan of folkmanis, but this beaver was adorable, and had the slightly scruffy well loved look that told me he had a very active child-cuddled life.

(You’re all familiar I trust with the story of the velveteen rabbit and what it means for a favorite stuffed animal to become “real”? Well this beaver was well on its way…)

“What is REAL?” asked the Rabbit one day. “Real isn’t how you are made,” said the Skin Horse. “It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.”

“Does it hurt?” asked the Rabbit.

“Sometimes,” said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. “When you are Real you don’t mind being hurt.”

“It doesn’t happen all at once,” said the Skin Horse. “You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.”

Virginia thought that since she wasn’t in the classroom anymore, she would give it to me to use in future child beaver presentations. She had carried it in a plastic baggie all the way to the bird store because she knew Worth A Dam would be there. She was absolutely delighted with the idea that the beaver would continue helping children.

As freely as this gift was offered, I knew it couldn’t be mine. This was a precious totem of her heroic adventures in the classroom battlefield and the light in her eyes told me it reminded her every time she held it why she started teaching in the first place. We agreed that she would keep the puppet, and that she would let me hold it for a while and take a picture with her iphone (of which she spoke so fondly I thought it might also be becoming “real” too…) and she would send me the photo when she could.

The moment I slipped on the puppet I could practically feel the energy and echos of a room full of laughing children. A sudden need to make a beaver voice possessed me, and I knew the first thing out of that beavers mouth would have to be “oh no! mayor rob was trying to kill me!” by the time he got to the sheetpile paneling in their lodge the beaver would have descended into a George Carlin monologue that wasn’t safe for public viewing.

I extracted him unwillingly from my hand, patted the beaver’s head and furry tail and handed him gently back, suggesting she poke some holes in that plastic bag.

Thanks Virginia, for sharing your very special gift with me, and reminding me how our seamstress beavers can thread the needle of community spirit to stich perfect strangers together.

Good Will Spotted in Alhambra Creek

heidi08 Environmental May 10, 2009

Beaver friend Jon Ridler did a Mother’s Day trash sweep so if you spied a kayak creeping along the banks this afternoon, that was him. He said he took out so many bottles, bags and milk crates he filled every single trash can downtown. He used the new scrape to get as far as the third dam, and was able to see that one of the spillways between the dredge and the creek has been nicely dammed. He disturbed a sleeping pond turtle and nothing else. Do yourselves and the beavers a favor and keep an eye on the creek until next time.

Happy Mother’s Day!

heidi08 Uncategorized May 10, 2009

Mother beaver seemed to be celebrating in private this morning, maybe getting willow delivered in the lodge for breakfast in bed? We had a nice event at Wild Birds Unlimited yesterday, made some new friends and reconnected with old ones. The baby pool generated some interest and our tally currently stands at

# Kits	Votes
6	2
5	3
4	9
3	5
2	1
1	2

As you can see, four is the biggest entry, and I’m hoping we can verify within the month. If you need a little beaver “mothering” on this mother’s day, check out this footage from the Philadelphia zoo. Mom has six kits, and is trying to keep an adventurous one out of the water. Of course as soon as she does the other five come to explore and she pretty much abandons the idea.

[youtube:http://youtube.com/watch?v=unTSwZzvKcw]

(Nice footage, but I hate seeing all that concrete.)

If you’re celebrating with your own non-castor mother today, you might thank her for that similar lovely moment in your own growing up, when mom had been trying and trying to stop you from doing that risky thing you loved, and finally used an “aha moment” to realize you were probably going to do it anyway, and it was better that you start practicing now while she could still help. Thanks Mom!