HAVE BEAVER WILL TRAVEL

heidi08 Beaver Art March 16, 2020

No school, no bars no restaurants, no kidding. We are all in cages now. But thank goodness our cages have comfortable furniture, restrooms and internet to keep us busy. Maybe it’s time to think about compelling artist Lisa Ericson and what her dramatic paintings appear to be missing.

Hyperrealistic Paintings of Migrating Animals Carrying Tiny Ecosystems on Their Backs

Combining her hyperrealistic style with her vivid imagination, Portland-based artist Lisa Ericson creates surreal, nature-inspired animal paintings. Each colorful acrylic-on-panel artwork from her Border Crossing series depicts fantastical combinations of plants and animals, all of which seem to be traveling on epic journeys to unknown lands.

From turtles carrying mini mobile habitats on their shells to small mammals, birds, and reptiles hitching a ride on the backs of swimming pelicans, each scene is like a tiny version of “Noah’s Ark.” Erikson’s work merges themes of animal migration in the wild with human migration and the refugee crisis. In one piece, titled Into the Dark, a mother lemur perches on a white pelican while her babies cling to her. “I made Into the Dark in response to the horror of the policy of separating children from their parents at the U.S. border,” Ericson reveals. “Often when I work, I get lost in the technical aspects of painting—the color, seeing the image take shape brushstroke by brushstroke—but this subject matter was a little raw for me and I felt emotional about it all the way through.”

Beautiful in every detail. But call me crazy, but when I think of an animal that carries his ecosystem on his back there is one particular mammal that springs to mind, isn’t a pelican or turtle.

With black backgrounds, each stunning painting is packed full of minute details, reminiscent of the realist still life paintings of the Dutch Masters. Ericson’s use of acrylic paint is jaw-droppingly precise, capturing each creature’s soft fur, reptilian scales, and quill-like feathers with a myriad of tiny brushstrokes.

Now I You can see even more of Ericson’s work on her website and Instagram.

Now, I know what you’re thinking. Beavers don’t “migrate” so much as disperse. But maybe they migrate exactly as much as humans do and for the very same reasons. Our beavers ‘migrated’ eventually. Mary and Joseph migrated. When they’re displaced, or their homeland becomes unsafe. They will leave to find a new home. And they carry so many species with them.

Lisa gets an email suggesting this.Meanwhile we’re all migrant families in cages now. So settle in and get used to it.

SENDING A KIT TO DO A BEAVER’S JOB

heidi08 Beaver Art March 15, 2020

This was on the the news the other day in Chesterfield Virginia. Lori Gongaware thinks she should be in the Guinness book of World Records for her beaver collection. I coughed politely into my beaver handkerchief and wished her well.

Chesterfield woman hopes to break Guinness World Record with her beaver collection

“I tend to take things to an extreme,” said collector Lori Gongaware.”

Lori says this all started as a joke but that joke blossomed into a collection that now takes up a whole room in her home.

“I thought ‘wouldn’t it be funny to have a beaver collection that was beaver animals but then have one beaver-cleaver from beaver-cleaver,’” said Gongaware. “I got everything. I got bottle openers, coffee cups, stampers, pencil sharpers and even a tattoo.”

Lori’s love for beavers has brought her more than just joy, but a chance to land her in the record books. “When I first started think of the record I was like gosh, I think that I probably have the most beaver items of anyone,” said Gongaware.

I can only smile indulgently say “Bless her heart” and pat her affectionately on the shoulder. Because the inside of my entire home, car, garden and garage would make the inside of her guest bedroom look like a n scale dollhouse. My collection came through design and accident and gifts and projects and silent auction items from around the world that we had to bid on because they were too cool to pass up. My collection is a working collection. meaning anyone of those beavers might be used for a event or purpose on any given day, An art project an educational tool or an exhibit or a christmas tree.

There’s a nice video of Lori’s collection at the link that I sadly can’t share here. It provides an excellent opportunity to say how many of these I already have. 1456? Good lord if you were to include children’s creations I would be many times that figure. Here is what Ben Goldfarb had to say about it in Eager. I was deeply offended when I first read it because it makes me look like a kook. But I have since accepted the truth and realized I kind of am.

To my knowledge, the world’s largest collection of beaver-themed tchotchkes, knickknacks, and memorabilia is housed in an oak-shaded street in Martinez, California. To enter, you must pass beneath the mural that hangs over the front porch — a reddish beaver, stick grasped in forepaws, tail raised in salutation. The dim interior has the feel of a shrine. Beaver magnets cling to the refrigerator; plush beavers perch atop the bureaus; a gallery’s worth of beaver paintings, prints, and posters stare down from every wall. Gnawed stumps rest next to the fireplace. Embroidered beaver napkins hang in the kitchen. In the backyard, a clay beaver crouches in the birdbath. If I’d come during Christmas, I would have seen a cardboard beaver cut-out, roughly the size of a black bear, strung with lights on the front lawn.

The fanatical curator of this collection is a candid, vivacious woman named Heidi Perryman, a child psychologist who, through willpower and single-mindedness, has become one of the planet’s foremost authorities on Castor canadensis. After months of exchanged emails, Perryman and I resolved to rendezvous in Martinez on the Fourth of July.

So go ahead, Lori. Be in the Guinness book of records. But we all know the truth. And it’s already in print.

PANDEMIC ADVICE FROM A BEAVER

heidi08 Beaver Art March 14, 2020

I’m sure we were all comforted by the product placement infomercial from the white house yesterday, but just in case you are still feeling rattled, this should help.This brilliant animal essay is from artist Ricardo Levin Morales. You can access his work here. The entire series is wonderfully helpful and reassuring.

I have given up hope on the John Hopkins site as they stopped reporting California yesterday and cured 7 people who were previously regarded as dead. This wonderful new site more than makes up for the loss. It’s called Worldometer, and their virus information’ even down to the state level, is outstanding.

In the meantime I have been cancelling beaver comittmments at a great rate, slashing them with a vorpal sword if you will, telling Earth day we can’t be there and backing out of my April presentation at the American Canyon Library. I hate cancelling things and am very loathe to back out but now I’ve got a kind of rhythm going. The hardest part is knowing that we don’t know whether the beaver festival can happen or not yet, and realizing I still have a lot of things to do assuming it will, even though part of my brain is telling me not to bother.

I will take the beavers advice and limit our exposure for now. And use the hibernation time to think about the future.

FEAR AND LOATHING IN LOUISIANA

heidi08 What's killing beavers now? March 13, 2020

Sure you might be thinking, beavers have an easier time of it now because of things like that conference and Ben’s book. But you’d be wrong. Because beaver stupid runs deep And Hamlet wasn’t kidding when he told Ophelia to stop hoping

“for virtue cannot so inoculate our old stock but we shall relish of it”.

Here’s the relish.

In running beaver battle, Pointe Coupee raises bounty to $50 per tail

In its latest battle against the beaver, officials in Pointe Coupee Parish raised the bounty on the pesky critters that build stream- and culvert-clogging dams that lead to more flooding.

The Parish Council unanimously approved an ordinance Tuesday that increases the bounty for beaver tail by $10, allowing trappers to collect $50 for each one they turn between April 1 and May 31. Trappers can still collect $40 before and after those times.

Officials say the boost is part of an effort to encourage more trapping because the cost of finding and destroying beaver dams is an expensive and time-consuming process. Many times crews will raze a dam only to find it rebuilt within a few days.

Fifty dollars a tail? FIFTY? If Louisiana is a boot Pointe Coupee is above the ankle and in the arches of the wearer. It is a parish with six rivers, s healthy alligator population and a wildlife refuge. The average working man can hardly walk by a deal like that When the mean income of the parish is about 20 dollars an hour, offering 50 to kill a beaver is too good to pass up. Imagine, if you trapped a family of five you could easily earn enough to install a goddamned flow device. But hey, I guess they aren’t into longer term solutions.

“Beavers are the best engineers you can find,” said Parish President Major Thibaut. “They’ll build dams on everything from streams and rivers to even bayous with a slight current.If you eliminate the beavers altogether … it saves you from having to go out.”

Well sure. I mean when you face another drought like you did four years ago you could just get some bailout money from Fema, you shouldn’t worry about killing off the animal that could prevent it. Why plan ahead? It’s Louisiana for god’s sake.

“We were able to get more meaningful work done when the time is spent not fooling with beaver dams,” he said. The council has already budgeted the money it expects to pay beaver trappers for this year, Thibaut said.

One of the great ironies of this article is that the photo they ran with it (shown above) is of a beaver with an ear-tag taken in Washington State. That particular beaver was given an earring not for a fashion accessory, but because it was reintroduced on PURPOSE to prevent drought, raise the water table and help salmon. Because, unlike you, that state understands that the animals are valuable and have a vital role to play for our streams.

A live beaver is more valuable to mankind than a dead one. These remaining beaver may be exterminated; but if protected they would multiply and colonize stream-sources. Here they would practise conservation. Their presence would reduce river and harbor appropriations and make rivers more manageable, useful, and attractive. It would pay us to keep beaver colonies in the heights. Beaver would help keep America beautiful.

Enos Mills, In Beaver World

TREADDING UPON ANOTHER’S HEEL

heidi08 Beavers March 12, 2020

O Gertrude, Gertrude,

When sorrows come, they come not single spies

But in battalions.

Hamlet: IV:5

Gosh I feel better knowing flights from EUROPE are cancelled. Don’t you feel better? I just cancelled our John Muir Earth day comittmment and we got our first cancellation for the beaver festival last night. I thought yesterday looked dire. Today, I’m fondly remembering how nice yesterday appeared.

Ben is in Jackson Wyoming working on the new book and posted this on facebook yesterday knowing that I’m looking for images of cascading dams. I wish he had filmed it with a drone and gotten the entire channel but its still worth sharing. Enjoy