Almost there

heidi08 Friends of Martinez Beavers December 18, 2009

So at our last Worth A Dam meeting there was discussion that we needed a logo, for letter head, visibility, general recognition factor. Maybe we should bite the bullet and pay someone to work on it for us? It probably wouldn’t cost that much. I wasn’t ready to give up Worth A Dam dollars for a logo. Because of our good luck with finding website help, I suggested we run another Craig’s list ad for an unpaid gig.

Once again, I was inundated with kind responses. Including some Fine Art students who wanted to help, a web and graphic artist who loved beavers, and a very delightful, professioinal artist in San Francisco. (And once again my ad was tagged as “inappropriate” and removed, I assume because it had the word “beavers” in it.)

Kiriko Moth: The Rats of NIMH

Kiriko Moth is a gifted artist working hard to turn her passion into a living, and judicially chooses on rare occasion to do Pro Bono work for a worthy nonprofit. She was interested in developing a graphic for us based on our ideas and was good at asking the right questions. We experimented with an adaption of the tail-up drawing on our postcard, but eventually wanted something more symbolic. I asked about incorporating a “key” in some way, to emphasize the keystone species aspect. She thought this might be a little too abstract for our audience, but we were all blown away with what she was able to develop.

Suffice it to say it is a logo that no other organization in the world could possibly have. It is truly uniquely Worth A Dam, and I’m very pleased with it. We still have hue and lettering to settle on, and once that’s done I will happily display it for your viewing pleasure. In the course of this project, I approached Kiriko about illustrating the children’s Keystone Species book we are planning. Beaver friend Penny Weigand has expressed an interest in publishing it with the charm bracelet and Kiriko is very interested in providing artwork. That work would even pay.

Moral of the story: Ask for what you want. Sometimes it works.

Ginger Bread Beavers

heidi08 Uncategorized December 17, 2009

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Gingerbread Beavers:

3 cups (390 grams) all purpose flour

1/4 teaspoons salt

3/4 teaspoon baking soda

2 teaspoons ground ginger

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg

1/4 teaspoon ground cloves

1/2 cup (113 grams) unsalted butter, room temperature

1/2 cup (100 grams) granulated white sugar

1 large egg

2/3 cup (160 ml) unsulphured molasses

Note: To prevent the molasses from sticking to the measuring cup, first spray the cup with a non stick vegetable spray (like Pam).

Confectioners Frosting:

2 cups (230 grams) confectioners sugar (icing or powdered sugar), sifted

1/2 cup (113 grams) unsalted butter, room temperature

1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

1 1/2 tablespoons milk or light cream

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The Victor Trading Company hand makes its cutters and I can say for certainty they are adorable. Added bonus, they are in Colorado and have beavers they watch from time to time. Other delightful offerings are available from the Fancy Flours here.

As a woman who made 300 hundred celebratory raviolis yesterday, I can tell you that one of the most direct pathways to “holiday spirit” runs through the kitchen. Bring in your grandson or daughter and set them to work frosting the tails.

Happy Beaver Baking!

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Owl Eviction

heidi08 Environmental, Friends of Martinez Beavers, New Species, Why We Care December 16, 2009

Remember the burrowing owls that adopted the abandoned development site in Antioch? Beaver friend Scott Artis of JournOwl wrote about them on his website, and followed up with an article in the Contra Costa Times and the MDAS Audubon newsletter. The owls were threatened by the removal of fencing which had offered them protection and kept the traffic and dumping away. Scott worked hard to get the city to force the developer to replace the fencing.

He wrote yesterday that he received the mitigation/relocation report from the city. It read:

The California Dept. of Fish & Game (CDFG) has signed off on the plan and provided them with a letter to proceed with eviction. Communication from the developer in September indicated that they will move forward with construction in Spring 2010. The report dictates that the passive relocation timeframe is Oct. 1, 2009 -Feb 1, 2010. The CDFG has not yet approved eviction for Oct. 1, 2010 to Feb 1, 2011 for any owls that show up or remain after initial relocation efforts, etc.

In short, the owls will be passively relocated through the use of one-way doors and the California ground squirrel population on the land will be fumigated. Unfortunately, the owls will not be tracked or checked up on after their eviction. I have provided details and excerpts from the document at http://journowl.com/index.php/archives/1063

I guess its a kind of victory that Scott was able to get anyone to pay attention to the owls at all, and passive relocation is definitely better than active destruction. But his email made me very sad. Does Fish and Game ever say anything but “yes”? Okay, kill the woodpeckers. Kill the beavers. Evict the burrowing owls. How about advising cities to work on accommodating their animal population? How many cities know of a nesting ground for 4 pairs of burrowing owls? Are there any cities that would like a greater mouse population? Why not make the owls into a feature of the housing project? You could call it the complex the “Burrows” and have an owl logo on your street signs. Children could learn about them in school and there could even be a local TV station Owl Cam. Antioch could be famous as a friend to owls, instead of only boasting a gloriously corrupt Redevelopment Agency.

Aside from the fact that the city is ignoring a precious resource it is lucky to possess in favor of the almighty dollar, it is startling that permission is so cheerfully given to evict “this species of special concern” by CDFG. As Scott said, clearly the owls are a “species of not so much special concern”. No effort will be made to track them to make sure they relocate into safe stable territory. The holes will be blocked with one way doors, and after two days the burrows will be collapsed. (I guess following the foreclosure model practiced heavily in Antioch where people leave their homes in uninhabitable states and strip every sell-able thing from the walls.)

After which, the ground squirrels will be fumigated. No story is complete without the dramatic death of a rodent. The fact that the squirrels are a keystone species and provide food and burrows for all manner of animals is really just a bonus.

I’m sorry for your owls, Scott. I know its sad to lose site of them, but know in your heart that getting them the attention you did was no small feat for a city that is known for the most famous harboring of a kidnapped child in history. Getting Antioch to pay attention to anything but outbuilding is a lion’s struggle. The owls were lucky to have you.

Beaver friend GTK sends the following addresses in case you want to write the Antioch mayor and council your opinion.

Mayor James D. Davis

Tel (925) 757-2020
Fax (925) 939-4617

jd4antioch@aol.com

Mayor Pro Tem Mary Helen Rocha

P.O. Box 5007
Antioch, CA 94531-5007

Tel (925) 207-7220

mrocha@ci.antioch.ca.us

Elected November 2008
Term expires November 2012

Chickenwire Chains

heidi08 Beavers elsewhere, Creative Solutions December 15, 2009

Ken Cook of Carol Stream, Illinois “doesn’t want to live” with chicken wire around his plants. Beavers are chewing trees, and the neighbors are worried they could fall on a house. They’ve tried coyote urine, and have been known to throw fruit at the offending rodents. They keep coming back. Almost like they think it’s winter and they need to store food before it freezes. The nerve. Those trees could fall on a house! (Never mind that the beaver wants the tree to fall the other direction.) Ken’s working with village manager Joe Breinig to bring in trappers.

When the issue first came to light, village officials sought advice from professionals on how to handle the situation “They recommended chicken wire and we’ve gone out in some of the public areas and done that,” Breinig said. “However, these beavers seem to be more aggressive than one might normally expect. The amount of damage seems to be pretty significant.”

Ahhh the rare aggressive beaver! Say no more. I’m sorry for your misfortune. You mean you have beavers that really really want to eat? Gosh, those kind are the worst! Tough luck. The reported temperature for Carol Stream Illinois today is 18 degrees. These beavers are working on their food cache that will feed a family when the ice gets too thick to break through. Imagine if you had to go to the grocery store today and buy enough food to last until spring? And what if you did that, and stocked up your pantry, and then someone moved you 15 miles down the road to a new house? Well not actually to a house. Just dumped you in the water, with no shelter and no pantry?

“We’re trying to do this somewhat delicately to not offend anybody,” Breinig said. “There are those who take the position that it’s a living animal and you try to do what you can and those who want them killed. We try to go the first route and not kill them.”

Mr. Breinig, lets be perfectly blunt here. It’s December. You’re moving a family out of their territory away from their waterworks and food storage and into a place where they have nothing. You are going to kill them. There is no way that 5 beavers can find a new place to live and a new pond deep enough to keep from freezing solid and lay in enough food to keep their family alive for three months. You’re killing them, you just aren’t being obvious about it.

“I don’t want to live with chicken wire around my plants,” Cook said.

Well there you have it. Who could expect a man to suffer so? So what if beaver habitat improves the watershed and increases bird and wildlife? Wrapping trees is a hardship no man should endure. It’s like another “trail of tears”. Of course if you were going to do it, I wouldn’t recommend chicken wire, since beavers are lots bigger than chickens. I would recommend 2×4 steel gauged wire. They make it in green for the visually sensitive. Or maybe a man of your delicate sensibilities would prefer to use the sand painting method described here. Choose a color that matches your precious trunk, mix in some sand, and paint the base with the grit. The texture will be unattractive to the beavers, and they’ll look elsewhere.

What am I saying? Just go ahead and kill them. Merry Christmas.

Busman’s Holiday

heidi08 Beavers elsewhere, Beavers or Social Ambasadors, Environmental December 14, 2009

The phrase “Busman’s Holiday” is an English saying referring to a vacation during which you engage in activities very like what you do for a living. Reading Lily Pond is somewhat like that for me, since pretty much every dramatic thing that happens in the book has happened for our beavers. For example, when vandals “destroy” the dam and the pond collapses, I remembered several similar actions to our colony’s real estate. Of course it was never vandals: (at least not by strict definition standards). It was always someone with a paycheck from the city, and it was always done on purpose, even if it was denied later.

The worst and most obvious was the night Skip Lisle took the dam down by three feet to install the flow device. That stressed our colony horribly. It was heartbreaking to remember how all 6 beavers worked all night, ripping up tules and mud and pulling sticks off their own lodge, to make repairs. The following day one of our kits nearly collapsed with exhaustion and had to go to the lindsay museum where he later died. The necropsy found lesions from roundworm parasite, that had even made him blind, but I’m sure the panicked night(s) of hard work didn’t help.

A lot of the author’s “discoveries” are common knowledge to us. Maybe because we were such novices to begin with, we didn’t have years of “PROVEN THEORY” to combat. We just watched and learned. Beavers make use of varietal feeding. Check. Beavers work on dams from both up and down stream. Check. Beaver kits are taken care of by the whole family. Check. Beavers solve arguments and assert their power though “wrestling” in the water which doesn’t result in bloodshed. Check. Muskrats live in and around beaver lodges. Check.Beavers vocalize while feeding, but also to socialize. Check. Beavers repair holes and leaks under the water, not just at the top. Check. Beavers are adaptive in their thinking and problem solving. Check.

One thing I love about the book, is reading about things we observe all the time, but never had a “name” for. Hope Ryden describes the beavers water wrestle as a “Push Match”, which is exactly what it looks like. She says of it

I have watched these matches many tmes and thought a lot about them. Any species that posses sharp teeth with which to obtain food must avoid using those hazardous tools against its kind, for doing so could bring about its extinction. Moreover, it is certainly not in the interest of an animal to kill a close relative whose hereditary make up (being similar to his own) offers a backup means by which his own genetic material may be propagated. Finally, only a colony that is able to live in peace is assured the help of many hands and jaws in the creation and maintenance of its waterworks. This it is not surprising that the beaver has evolved strong inhibitions against biting, together with a ritualistic means by which to safely settle disputes.

Hope Ryden: Lily Pond page 167

Martinez Beaver Push-Match:

In some ways, reading Hope Ryden’s book is like finding a loveletter written by your grandmother. It’s wonderful to know what went on in her head, and to see the parallel’s in how she was feeling and thinking. But its also confusing to realize that someone else had these feelings, allowed their life to be shaped by them, and ultimately moved past them. It’s like seeing a familiar production from back stage. You know the plot and how it ends, but its delightful to see how the cast puts it all together.

Is there a copy under your tree yet? You can get one here.