Then last night, (after honoring a ‘beaver tour commitment’ for the silent auction at earth day, I saw this posted on the Beaver Management Forum Facebook page. Aside from being a heartwarming, compassionate example of men using their brains and effort instead of reflexively hiring a trapper, his presentation is technologically impressive and frankly adorable. (I’m thinking that condo has more than a couple newly retired engineers?) Click on the square to see the presentation from Art Wolinsky of Sherwood Glen Condominiums in New Hampshire.
Click to Listen
Don’t you wish they were your neighbors? Nice work, Art. I couldn’t understand WHY the beavers would bother building a dam along the road if they could get the same effect by just plugging four culverts. Art explained the road and culverts are new, so that made a little more sense. I am sure this group will figure out a solution in no time.
Oh and this made me smile last night. You might enjoy it too.
Alaska, apparently, but we had hard rain long enough to top both dams yesterday and make things a little more tenuous at the beaver ponds. This morning I saw ‘Reed’ slathering mud on the secondary and his sibling coming languidly back from downstream to check if he was done yet. Also a raccoon doing the breast stroke and a muskrat swimming in a manner I can only describe as ‘anxious’ out of the bank hole as soon as the beaver came back.
The pipe isn’t plugged NOW at any rate! The primary looks fairly robust, but the secondary showed some wear. It held up better than I expected. Obviously its not ALL made of reeds.
Well there’s no rest for the weary. Sigh. I received several emails yesterday containing only swear words from many a beaver lover who knows how hard these kids have worked on their dams, but honestly the beavers seemed to take it in stride. There are some problems beavers can’t fix. They can’t stop people from telling lies about them and they can’t prove that their relatives used to live in the Sierras. They can’t show family pictures of salmon comfortably leaping over their dams. They can’t publish a dissertation about how raising the watertable actually expands the riparian border even when they remove trees. Our beavers relied on us to stop the city, to keep away the trappers, and to limit the sheetpile.
But this one they can handle on their own.
Oh and for the record, rain on your wedding day is just inconvenient – not ironic. A divorce on your wedding day would be ironic. Or rain on the day you just installed a sprinkler system.
Just saying.
Oh and check out the lovely new brochure design from Amelia Niemi and Lorena Castillo. Isn’t it fantastic?
Once upon a time there was a partly industrialized city that wanted to give the impression that it cared about nature and had free spaces. It decided one of the best ways to do this was to restore its waterfront so that there would be a living, clean, growing destination in the middle of the city that could be enjoyed by walkers or passers by and maybe become a destination. The city spent a good deal of money making the creek look natural and hired a respected firm to re plant all the native trees that had been removed years before. It took a long time and a lot of tax payer dollars, but at the end they had a ‘natural’ looking section of water that added value to the city and the homes that surrounded it.
Can you guess what happened next?
Joey Dimauro JBD Photography
Penetanguishene Waterfront Wetland Restoration Master Plan
You may be surprised to learn that this story isn’t about Martinez. It’s the story of Maitland Park in Brampton Ontario, where the city hired Dougan & Associates Ecological Design to beautify an area and make the watershed appear ‘more natural’. Apparently, they did such a fine job that a beaver colony moved in to admire their work. Now the city is anxious about the dams and wants to rip them out. Residents like the beavers and enjoy watching them and are trying to keep the city from getting rid of them.
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before.
This morning I got an email from Tyler J.W. Higgins who has started a petition and a facebook page to save the Maitland Park Beavers. He writes
I am currently circulating an online petition to have a local population of beavers appropriately accommodated and protected by local conservation and public authority. I live in Brampton, Ontario Canada, in a suburban area with a so-called “wetland conservation” area within close walking distance. To my great delight last fall I discovered a large lodge structure as well as a dam in excess of 10 ft across. To my incredible indignation that dam was destroyed mere months ago, and since I have been, rather modestly, campaigning to have the beavers right to live and work on our stream protected. I am not alone in my efforts, though it is difficult to create awareness with limited financial and other resources that would be required to campaign more effectively. In my search for help, inspiration and information I came across your website. Instantly I knew I had found a source of inspiration as it helps me to know I am not alone in my utter amazement and love for these animals. I am hoping that your organization can assist me with any methods, resources, information that can assist me and my furry little friends in protecting them. Any signatures that can be added to the online petition by members of your mailing list or your organization would be an enormous contribution to the welfare of the beavers in my neighborhood.
Martinez knows exactly what Tyler is going through! To show your dejá-vu solidarity go sign the petition and if you want to join him on Facebook go here. You can also writethe mayor and the park works people for good measure. I’ll make sure he knows where to find other tools.
Upon the anniversary of mom’s death, Worth A Dam members gathered at the bridges in the evening to mark the occasion and see what might transpire. We met a big family with young children who had tried to come with kayaks the night before to watch the beavers from the water. I explained that our creek is way too small for the beavers to emerge when 5 floating boat-shadows are bobbing in the water, and suggested they watch with us from the bridge.
Coming to see - Cheryl Reynolds
While we were waiting we saw two muskrats, one barely bigger than a hamster ducking in the shadows and a bolder one the size of a guinea pig swimming about the pond. At eight o’clock, this fellow showed up on the bank by the primary. He climbed out onto the land and gave us all a good view of how truly healthy he is growing up to be, striking this pose for effect.
On Farmer’s Market days there is a very generous/indulgent homeless man that insists on leaving strawberries for the beavers at the dam. This little fellow downed one after another until his lips and nose were bright red. This photo is actually the least painted one Cheryl too that night!
Beavers love berries - Cheryl Reynolds
All that berry-juice must have went straight to his head because after he was done he paddled about in the water and bobbed out of sight right about where the pipe to Skip’s flow device ends. The roundfence (or cage looking thing) was pulled off in the flooding and is now sitting in the corp yard. The pipe for the Castor Master has been open and exposed for three months, and one of the best clues we have that Dad or GQ aren’t in residence is the fact that it still spouts water and hasn’t been plugged like a leak to stop the pond from draining. Beavers can feel suction and the pull of water in their dams so they are very sensitive to things that drain water away. Well, apparently older beavers are very sensitive to it, because up until that moment our kits had been completely oblivious to it.
Up until that moment, that is. At 8:30 in the evening, on the anniversary of mom’s death, we suddenly noticed lots and lots of this coming from the end of Skip’s flow device.
Growing Up - Cheryl Reynolds
1 Corinthians 13:11When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.
Those mourning a parent additionally observe a twelve-month period (Hebrew: שנים עשר חודש, shneim asar chodesh ; “twelve months”), counted from the day of death. During this period, most activity returns to normal, although the mourners continue to recite the mourner’s kaddish as part of synagogue services for eleven months.
A year ago this morning I was waken by a phone call from Moses who had been standing at Starbucks watching over mom beaver as she huddled on a little patch of land, looking weak and disoriented. Jon and I hurried down to check after calling the others. We found her chattering and confused, at one point bumping into the wall while she swam. Cheryl drove down with an animal crate from IBRRC and we made the decision to pick her up and take her to Lindsay, where she was examined and euthanized.
Was it really a year ago?
It used to inexplicably feel like it happened a million years ago and like it happened yesterday. Like if you could inhale the stale breath of loss deeply enough you could trace it all the way back to the tremor of that morning – when loss was merely feared. Now the grief has had a year to sink in, the mud has piled high, and mom’s tombstone, in the jewish tradition, can be officially unveiled.
This morning I brought down some flowers and was happy to see that her children were observing the day in most commonly observed beaver tradition: doing what she taught them. Like all mothers, she obviously tucked a note in their jeans genes as she was leaving. They must have just got around to reading it because they’ve been hard at work being the beavers she meant for them to be. The note listed her priorities for them, and what appear to have become their priorities for themselves:
1. First Build a dam
2. Then Build a lodge
The secondary dam is looking very solid, and no one was bothering with it but a happy kingfisher who wondered why I wouldn’t leave so he could dive for dinner in peace.
Farther up stream, above the primary dam, two busy beavers cast ripples in the water.
Huge balls of mud were being rolled out of lodge number 1 and great excavations were occurring at the site of lodge number 2. I’m not yet sure where they’ll settle lodge nuber 3 but they obviously have plans in mind. Two beavers were working this morning and when the water wasn’t cloudy with their efforts it was emerald translucent glass.
Standing at the Escobar bridge, as I had stood for so many mornings when our colony was just starting out, I was struck by how much had happened and how very little had changed. Beavers had died and beavers were living. Dams washed out and dams were standing. Trees had fallen and trees were growing. Both banks of the creek were layered with an explosion of willow, growing up and out and over. This lush canopy was rich enough to cover a multitude of scars: the holes where mom sat when she was ill, the collapsed lodge that flooded and imploded in March, even the mistaken sheetpile that sealed a property-owners land and our beavers’ fate – covered over with new growth. Everything dead was covered by everything living.
I was reminded of a Carl Sandburg poem, which you should listen to just because of the musicality of his voice, another living thing covering ideas of death.
And mom, who is gone and not forgotten, we remember you today and are grateful for the very long visit you paid to Martinez.
