Okay, I worked hard on this. I let the poem out slowly, one verse at a time, and it took for bleedin’ ever to make the ‘book’. But at last I think I have something worth sharing. Thank you to all the artists I borrowed from (most of whom you’ll recognize) and thank you to the Smother’s brothers for giving me the idea. It often helps to read limericks aloud. And don’t forget to flip to the back page. It is one of my favorites.
Please read and let me know if you think I’m wrong about my guess.
During the pandemic I started playing around with using DuoLingo which is a free online program to learn languages. I of course went straight for the Latin, which was a disappointingly short course. But have sense transitioned into German just because it makes me remember the distant summer I spent there before my senior year which is auspiciously where I met Jon. Clearly that’s another story for some late night fireside chat with some kind of alcohol involved, but what matters now is that I am surprised constantly how much German ‘stayed’ with me after all this time.
Lucky for me I was JUST in time for this translation.
This made me especially happy because I had just learned the word “Brauchen” which means “We NEED” in german. So I could almost completely translate the last line even if I didn’t know it by heart already! “Why we need them!” The fleisigen Nagitiere is the hard working rodent, of course.
Congratulations Ben on all your hard work that went into crafting a story worth telling and repeating and translating into other languages AND to beaver buddy Gerhard Schwab who likely made the appetite in the country for this book.
Now I just want to flip through the pages and find out if Martinez is still in it and if I am in fact translated as “offen und temperamentvoll” ?
At least one of which, of course, I usually still am.
Turns out newspapers don’t like to find out letters are stealing from the SF Chronicle. The editor wrote me back and said something very confirming about “Chagrin” and added the link AND the attribution. Next time I’ll know what to do.
Editor’s note: Since this letter was published in EW, we have learned that it draws heavily and without attribution on a column by Heidi Perryman published in the San Francisco Chronicle on June 26.
This nice description of the muskrat contribution comes from author Susan Pike in the Foster’s Daily Democrat. I have been hearing a lot of things about how they contribute to healthy marshes and her explanation really helped.
Muskrats tend to get overlooked — we’re all aware of beavers and their role in building wetlands with their dams and impacting surrounding woodlots by cutting down valuable timber, but you don’t hear much about muskrats. Muskrats are, in fact, invaluable wetland engineers, removing extra plants and making sure waterways are clear. They carve channels through dense cattail or pickerel stands that lead into and out of their lodges (trappers routinely set their traps along these canals). These provide space for other plants and animals, helping to keep a marsh from becoming a monoculture. They also slow the process of succession in a marsh where the buildup of dead vegetation causes the marsh to fill in and become a field. Muskrats help keep the perfect mix of water and vegetation in marshes.
Oh okay, beavers can share some of the credit I guess. I was especially happy that it was published with photos of ACTUAL MUSKRATS not nutria or ground hog. She has some cool facts about them too that I didn’t know. Did you know they had lips inside their teeth like beavers so they can chew underwater? I didn’t. And did you know they can stay under for up to 17 minutes?
Without the muskrat, our secret marsh would probably be a monoculture of cattails or perhaps would have become so clogged with dead cattails and sediment that it would be well on its way to becoming dry land. This hidden marsh is a reminder to me that nature is a wonderful balancing act; that unlikely characters, the muskrat in this case, can have subtle feedbacks on a system that are critical for the health of that system – n this case maintaining a healthy marsh.
Once upon a time I was the new kid on the block trying to save beavers. Those days are (thankfully) history. Now there are beaver disciples all across the land. Making huge difference. This is the recent post from Rachel Siegel who was motivated to save the beavers when her HOA wanted them killed in Glanview Park in Illinois. She started the facebook page Glenview Beavers fan club, republished our urban guidebook for their state and now has become a nonprofit under ISI just like us.
I have emerged unscathed from my meeting with the IEPA today! With the help of Representative Jen Gong-Gershowitz, I was able to make a polished pitch about the role that process-based restoration (and beavers!) can play in improving our water quality and creating floodwater storage capacity.
We left the meeting with a couple of action items, including setting up a meeting with staff at the IDNR. So in the meantime, I will continue to work on setting up my new organization, the Illinois Beaver Alliance, which is a fiscally 
sponsored project of Inquiring Systems, Inc. , and thus has nonprofit status.The mission of the Illinois Beaver Alliance is to improve the health and function of Illinois watersheds, which will increase climate resilience, improve water quality, increase biodiversity, and create floodwater storage capacity; and to educate the public about the ecological importance of beavers and the modern tools for resolving human-beaver conflicts. I’ll tell you more about it soon!
Tomorrow we have our meeting with the Village of Glenview and then I am going downtown with Donald Hey of Wetlands Research to pitch nutrient farming (or water quality credit farming) to a prominent Clean Water Act attorney.
Did you catch all that? She presented her position to her state representative and is now going to meet with fish and game a water attorney. Is your mind blown completely? Beavers: The Next Generation has some fine recognition of our buddy Rusty Cohn in the County RCD Monthly Newsletter.
We are 100% certain that at least some of you know our July Conservation Champion, Rusty Cohn. If you’re on Facebook or NextDoor, you may know him as the one sharing photos of local cute baby animals: the downtown Napa beavers!
Rusty does a great job inspiring us to treasure the wildlife that we have in our downtown. In addition to sharing his photos, he also shares stories and behaviors he observes while photographing these creatures. So who is Rusty?
Rusty has been in Napa 10 years and says his favorite part about being here is that it is a small town with a slower pace of life that is matched with a great diversity of wildlife so close by. After visiting his daughter here, he and his wife fell in love with the area and decided to move here once he retired. Now, Rusty keeps busy with several hobbies (including photographing local wildlife) and walking his dog Toby.
After first noticing a beaver dam next to Hawthorne Suites Hotel while out walking, he became fascinated with beavers and all of the other wildlife that were living in and near the beaver ponds. Rusty says his favorite part about photographing and sharing the animals found in our urban landscapes is that you never know what you might see next. He finds it exciting to observe the variety of wildlife, and he hopes his photos encourage others to become more interested in viewing and protecting the diverse wildlife of Napa County.
One thing Rusty wants us all to know: “Napa is a wonderland of biodiversity, get outside and enjoy it!”
Not only does Rusty share photos on Facebook and NextDoor, he also shares videos on his YouTube page!
We love community members who are excited about seeing and sharing local wildlife, and Rusty is a great example of that. Thanks for helping us get to know the nature in our own neighborhoods!
WHOO HOO! Rusty has been a good friend and supporter of Worth A Dam and helped out at our festivals AND earthday! I’m so happy his hard work is getting noticed.
Meanwhile I my hard work is apparently only worth stealing because my OpEd was stolen again by a letter to the editor for the Eugene Weekly. Hope my words are having fun being kidnapped!
Oregon is killing off one of nature’s best firefighters.
Last summer Oregon endured the single most flammable year in modern history. Record-setting fire after record-setting fire churned through the state, yet once again we continue to ignore or even kill the water-saving firefighter who would work for free to protect us: the beaver.
Recent research, published under the title “Smokey the Beaver,” found beaver complexes were three times more resistant to wildfire than similar areas without beaver. Beaver habitat, with its dams, ponds and canals, showed less wildfire damage than un-beavered streams. In keeping water on the landscape, beavers reduce fire, mitigate drought and recharge groundwater.
Beavers save water and reduce the risk and severity of wildfire. They do it all day, every day, at zero taxpayer expense. Their ponds have been consistently shown to increase biodiversity from stoneflies to steelhead. Beaver ponds help fish survive at a time when the Pacific coast is hemorrhaging salmon.
Our own self-interest dictates our attention. Yet Oregon isn’t learning.
Susan Libby
True. This time it contained five whole original lines of her own specific to Oregon which must have been exhausting to pen. I hope the shoplifter isn’t too tired to steal more?
Editor’s note: Since this letter was published in EW, we have learned that it draws heavily and without attribution on a column by Heidi Perryman published in the San Francisco Chronicle on June 26.
I pretty much think of blogs as the most ridiculous and least read information on the web. I rank it right below that note your mom packed saying to brush your teeth and the .gif of the cat jumping on the counter as soon as its owners leave the house. I am always surprised to remember people read this. And always surprised when other blogs act like they matter.
Kotte,org calls itself one of the oldest on the web and the guardian in 2013 called it one of the 50 most important blogs in the world. So who knows, maybe this matter?
Perhaps the Beavers Will Save Us
