Well, well. well. Things are start to take shape in festival land. I’m thinking we’ll be back down to around to around 40 exhibits this year which means they’ll be room for everyone to be on an interior lane. I think that will give the event a snugger feeling. Also lots of opportunities for folks to pass thru the middle and see Amy’s art progressing, so I’m okay with the smaller numbers.
Here’s my thinking so far…
Rick included me this morning in an email about a beaver spotted in sunnyvale, our first ever. and this out by moffett gateway, (which btw was recently leased by Google, because of course there are beavers in Google!)
This photo courtesy of Romain Kain.
Yikes! Poor little disperser looking for his new home. I wonder how far he is from water? I wonder how many souls end up that way, looking for a start in life and a way to pay back student loans and find themselves trapped on a Google campus. Silicon Valley is a hard place to leave. I once called a tech about something ordered (a beaver bumper sticker) and the tech got quiet and then said carefully, “I think you might be my aunt!”.
(Which of course I was, one of my sister’s youngest daughter back then was working at Zazzle to help pay for her tuition. Small world. Now she’s working at that beaver campus.) I hope that little guy connects with water soon!
Finally, a weird article this morning reminds us why beavers have to be careful around cars.
Roadkill Cuisine: Can You Eat That?
More than 300,000 animals are hit by vehicles in the road each year, according to a study by the Federal Highway Administration, and the figure is believed to very under-reported. While an estimated 200 people die from these collisions in the U.S. every year, it’s mostly the wildlife that get the raw end of the deal.
Which brings us to the issue at hand. If you accidentally kill something on the road, can you eat it?
Beaver
If you’ve struck and killed a beaver, you should feel guilty. Once among the most widely distributed mammals in North America, beavers were eliminated from much of their range in the late 1800s because of unregulated trapping and loss of habitat, according to the California Fish and Wildlife. These brilliant engineers of the animal kingdom build dams and create wetlands that are among the most biologically productive ecosystems in the world, according to the Beaver Institute. Their ponds promote biodiversity, repair eroded stream channels, and promote salmon and trout recovery. Beaver is considered a game animal in some places, and there is no shortage of YouTube videos on how to cook it.
How is it that an article about roadkill says more nice things about beaver than most of the beaver articles we report on? Recognizing the difference they make for salmon and trout. Surely if The Street has enough time to dig up the info from the beaver institute, Jim or Becky in timber falls Wisconsin can do it when they write some article explaining why the city needs to trap them.
Right?
