Month: June 2012

Seems like old times…

heidi08 Festival, Friends of Martinez Beavers, Recent Sightings, Video June 11, 2012

Last night on the footbridge we were treated to a beaver show with a cast of at least three characters. It all started with a visitor from the ‘new’ bank hole under the cottonwood tree. He sauntered around picking choice willow and brought the branches back to eat or share. Then a second beaver emerged, who (not to be outdone in offerings) took a lovely choice branch OFF the dam and brought it back to the second lodge. Before a third beaver came from upstream and crossed over the secondary before making his ambling way downstream.

It has been a long time since we saw three beavers at once! While this one was coming down another was eating a strawberry under the bridge!

Because our beavers have excellent timing, a family of three generations just happened to be together walking on their evening stroll. Grandma, Grandpa, Mom and Dad, and a charming little girl watched in awe. When I described what was happening and invited them to the beaver festival they said they had been last year and had a wonderful time! Were beavers nocturnal? Could beavers hold their breath? Did they ever eat fish? After watching one beaver mud the dam the child soberly announced that she wanted to BE a beaver, and clarified to mom that this aspiration exceeded even her decision to be a fairy.

I of course understood exactly what she meant.

All in all, it was excellent beaver viewing. Warm and with primarily benign homeless sightings. The most threatening was a thuggy youth who left his other thuggy friends to come stand with us on the bridge and ask questions. Did that pipe they put through the other dam work? Will we need another one? Is their a nest somewhere? He was particularly surprised to see a tail slap because he had never witnessed one before. After the excitement he wasn’t so thuggy, and he and his friends didn’t bother anyone. Before the solstice steals our evening sun away, I would definitely advise making the trip to watch for yourself.

The Worst Beaver Festival Ever…

heidi08 Beavers elsewhere, Educational, Festival, History June 10, 2012

Fur trading days make a comeback at 4-H Center

Men made fortunes during those boom times. Few people realize that John Jacob Astor built his multimillion dollar empire by outfitting trappers and buying and selling animal pelts and hides. Fewer folks know that 13 of the 16 recognized rendezvous were held west of the Continental Divide.

Six of the gatherings took place in territory belonging to Mexico and six more at Horse Creek near what is now Daniel, Wyo. The sites were chosen to accommodate almost 2,000 men and were named for the site area.

Fast forward to the present day: the lost tradition gets reborn June 14-16 at The Furtakers of America Rendezvous at Evansville’s Vanderburgh 4-H Center. Trappers, traders and woodsmen will gather to conduct demonstrations of woodcrafting, trapping, hide preparation, root and herb identification, skinning techniques, nuisance animal control, predator calling and much more.

Talk about reliving the glory days! Evansville Indianna is having a three day rendezvous extravaganza to teach families and children all about the glories of beaver trapping – and no I’m not kidding. Tickets for all three days are 10 dollars each. That’s a bargain at twice the price! Remember that historic rendezvous combined some of the most dangerous, greedy men without social skills in an open space with gunfire and alcohol – you can see why they’d want a rerun to teach the kids about!

It was fur, not gold, that opened the American West.

After the United States acquired the massive Louisiana Purchase in 1803, fur trappers began banding together for sojourns into unknown territory. They risked their lives in quest of beaver pelts.

European fashion dictated that “gentlemen should wear top hats made only from beaver plews (pelts).” Europe soon ran out of beavers, so the task fell to American trappers to fill the orders. However, it was one thing to get the pelts and a different matter to sell them and obtain supplies without lengthy journeys back to civilization.

To solve the problem William Ashley staged the first Trapper-Trader Rendezvous in 1824 on the Green River near the Wyoming-Utah border. It was an uproarious success, and for the next 16 years trappers, traders, Native Americans and mountain men eagerly awaited these rowdy encounters.

Don’t miss this opportunity to celebrate our greedy heritage of slaughter and unintended consequences! No word yet on whether Evanston plans to hold a similar ‘draught festival’ or corresponding ‘silent spring jubilee’ later in the year.

The general public is invited to join in the scheduled outdoor activities, games and crafts designed to interest children of all ages and women who are interested in participating in things like trap setting, turkey calling, knife sharpening and wildlife identification.

Festival Friends

heidi08 Beaver Art, Beavers, Friends of Martinez Beavers June 9, 2012

Thursday evening a mysteriously heavy package from Sherri Tippie arrived in the mail. When I opened it up I found this

102 clay beavers, mothers and kits, and yearlings and an array of beaver chews which are made from actual beaver-stripped branches in Sherri’s garden. These handmade treasures were for our festival, lovingly wrapped in patchouli scented tissue paper. Sometimes remarkable things have to be processed in smaller doses, so here’s a closeup of the ‘brown family’.

Aren’t these gorgeous? We’ll be finding some very adorable ways to feature these at the beaver festival, but we should all take a moment to realize what a remarkably generous and time consuming gift this is. I first learned about these little beavers in an article years ago, and was dazzled to meet them (and their gifted artist) in person at the conference last year. I loved each one of them AND her and sat through her entire lecture with tears streaming down my face because it made me so happy to hear her in person. Later that night at the banquet dinner I was lucky enough to sit beside her and after endlessly plying her with questions, describing mysterious beaver behavior for her to clarify, and burdening her with heartfelt stardom, I shamelessly begged for her to give some of those beavers for the festival. She was reluctant, they take time to make and she had an Audubon show coming up, but in the end, she made sure I left with 25 that night.

The amazing part? I didn’t even beg for these.

If you haven’t done so already, show your support by picking up a copy of Sherri’s excellent book and subscribing to her newsletter. Here’s her interview this winter on Agents of Change if you need a colorful reminder. And now this likely candidate for more festival-directed begging was sent by longtime supporter GTK. Wouldn’t they be an excellent sponsor?

Painting the Town…

heidi08 City Reports, Educational, Video June 8, 2012

Mario Alfaro-June 5 to June 20

Reception June 8th, 6-9pm

mARTinez Gallery

630 Court Street

Martinez, CA

Whatcha doing tonight? Movie? Date night? Graduation party? Whatever it is, see if you can chisel out some time to stop by the mARTinez Gallery and shake the hand of the man who boldly painted this…

And then this….

And then THIS

Just in case you’re new to this story, Mario painted the mural on Main St, and folks would stop by and ask ‘where was the beaver?’ so he added one, based on Cheryl’s photo from this website. Then the big subterranean civic muscle flexed and Mario was ordered to paint over the mural. He was very upset and also painted over his name. Director of Public works Dave Scola was good enough to speak to the media, but he obviously was just the mouthpiece for those much more powerful – (I imagine someone who owns a block of sheetpile that reaches higher than anywhere in the city). (Maybe someone with a particular resentment for all things castor.) After the chronicle ran with the story the city realized they better smooth things over with the artist, and Mario eventually signed his name again: this time with a very small beaver tail attached to the “O”.

Mario ‘s work will be on display for the month of June, and no one should miss this opportunity to buy this man a beer and thank him for trying to listen to the will of the people and putting Martinez in the news in Florida, Milwakee and Chicago. And by the way if you never listened to this, you really, really should. Come to think of it, even if you did listen to it you should probably do so again, because everyone deserves to laugh this hard.

Sadly, I can’t be there tonight, but go for me, okay? Tell Mario that Beaver people thank him for his effort and remember what a difference he made.Tell him we smile every time we walk past the main street bridge because we know that beaver is hidden under there.

This morning’s image surprised me. When I got it home and on the big screen I realized this beaver is Dad. Look at his very bumpy head, and different colorations. He was going back and forth across the creek up from the footbridge, emerging and returning to what we believe is a new bankhole under the cottonwood tree there. Reed still seems to be in the hole right by the footbridge, but I’ve never seen Dad down this far before. Hmm…

Wildcare visits Beavers

heidi08 Beavers elsewhere, Beavers or Social Ambasadors, City Reports, Educational, Environmental June 7, 2012

Wildcare is a rehabilitation and education nonprofit located in San Rafael. If a hawk ran into your office building in San Francisco or a shivering raccoon turned up in the parking lot in Corte Madera, odds are they’d bring it to Wildcare in Marin. Their newsletter is published every month and goes to some 10,000 addresses. So I was fairly excited when our new otter friends talked them into including beavers in their June issue. Check out the lovely photos, courtesy of Cheryl Reynolds as usual!

beaver dads – worth a dam!

by Heidi Perryman, Ph.D., President & Founder, Worth A Dam

The animal kingdom often provides us with a fairly bleak view of fatherhood – especially in mammals! Defending territory and mating rites seem to take up most of dad’s time – but when it comes to beavers we see a whole new side to paternity!

Since beavers select a single partner and mate for life, dad has much more time for hands-on childcare, parenting moments, everyday repairs and helping around the house.

Beavers and father’s day! This is an exciting inclusion on the paternal theme! I have learned amazing things about beaver fathers since I’ve been watching our family. Go read the whole thing yourself which I worked hard to finish back before festival details were all-consuming.

When mom is getting ready to give birth dad will often move into a nearby “bachelor pad” to give her space, but once the kits are on the scene, he is in close attendance. It is dad who brings tender new shoots to the nursing kits to entice them to try solid food and dad with whom they spend much of their time. He gives them beaver-back rides and practices swimming and diving to teach them how to make their way in the water.

If you’re looking to be (or find) a better father, we’d recommend spending some time with beavers!

Having an editor who asked me questions, nudged me to say more and prompted me to clarify my more oblique points made me realize that I’ve been very, very spoiled on this website – writing without supervision whatever misspelled non sequiturs I might want to employ. JoLynn (who does the newsletters) reminded me to include a natural history section (what I would call ‘beaver basics’) and I was happy to feature dad’s remarkable parenting and talk about him as a single parent. We disagreed about how much of the beaver ;controversy’ to include, but ended up with a fairly harmonious compromise. I made sure to conclude with a plug for the beaver festival.

The Martinez Beavers have earned international recognition, local, state and national media, a popular website, a community of followers and a yearly beaver festival. This year’s (celebrated August 4th) will mark the 5th anniversary of their arrival.

While the first festival sought just to apply pressure to an ambivalent city council that had not yet decided to welcome the beavers, the event has turned into a celebration of all beavers, drawing wildlife supporters from around California. The entire crew of Worth A Dam is committed to helping cities learn about inexpensive solutions to beaver problems and teaching that these remarkable aquatic engineers “really ARE Worth A Dam!”

As of 2012, three other states have adopted beaver festivals of their own, and cities from Ontario to Maine are considering future trials.

Gosh that makes us sound impressive. Go read the whole thing and while you’re there check out what else wildcare has to offer. I love the idea that Northern California readers will read the article and think about beavers in a whole new light.

A.M. photo from Cheryl of ‘Reed’ carrying mud.