If there is a soundtrack you should be hearing in your head all through this post, It’s the jaunty Andrew sisters number above. I could not get it out of my head all day yesterday. And here’s the reason why. At our beaver dinner Sunday, we had two guests who take the train from the east bay and walk up Castro to our house. When they got here they told us about some pretty interesting marks on the trees.
So of course I made Jon check first thing in the morning. And guess what he found? Chew Chew Chew Baby!
That beautiful gnawed arrow! Precious beautiful wood chips! Look at how lovely. If there’s a more heavenly sight for these sore eyes I can not imagine what it is. After we finished dancing a jig and calling everyone we know to share our cigars we did what we could to face any backlash that might arise. I connected with city leaders and Jon wrapped the trees to make sure the final product isn’t felled into the street or the restaurant.
Beavers in Martinez again. Just like it used to be.
There are a few fascinating things about this bit of manna from heaven. The first is timing. Every year the beavers were with us, like clockwork, around new years we would see a massive chewing night. Not -mind you- a massive felling night, just chewing. Several trees in a clump. Almost like marking territory. For no apparent reason,
It used to vaguely remind me of the half empty bottles you find in your kitchen the day after new years. Did we drink all that?
Was this a beaver party? A single beaver with a very sudden tooth growth spurt? Who can say, But this is not a new phenomenon, the January tree massacre. It’s something I’d worry about every year. I don’t know if it happens everywhere or if its something of a family tradition unique to our beavers, but I know it exists.
Another thing worth noting about this incident is that this is the EXACT SAME PLACE the beavers were living before. Right above where they lived. So whether that means this is some offspring visiting his old haunts or some disperser staying overnight at a ghost town because it was easier than making a new home from scratch we cannot say but it’s pretty awesome news anyway.
And the final bit of awesome sauce is that if you look closely you can see that these VERY trees have been chewed before, resprouted, and chewed again. If there is a better educational poster for coppicing I certainly don’t know what it is.
Of course there’s no guarantee that a beaver that visits is a beaver that stays. It might just be “one of those things”. A random stop on a journey somewhere else. Like all magical trysts we could get all excited but this could turn out to be a classic one night stand [of trees]. Just because you really really like when someone visits it doesn’t ever mean they’ll stay.
Cue the second soundtrack.
But we’ll always have Paris. A town that gets happy about beavers. A town that knows what a flow device is. A network of people to help. A village of people where 200 people react with joy when I post a picture of a tree chewed by beavers. Who else has that?
There’s a special providence in the fall of a sparrow.
If it be now, ’tis not to come.
f it be not to come, it will be now.
If it be not now, yet it will come—the readiness is all.
