Month: April 2024

I was excited about this story and thought it would make a great graphic for the kids art project this summer at the festival…Kids get to watercolor their own beaver tail. I bet they will all be unique too!

I was looking at this drawing from our 2012 festival that Amelia Hunter made for our brochure. It’s pretty darn cute and I was wondering if our chalk artist (Amy Hall) had ever considered adding this moment to her creation at the festival. I wasn’t sure she had ever been lucky enough to see it in person, it’s a pretty rare moment in time. Even I have only have a handful of memories of this delight.

Young kits get rides when they are learning to dive and not yet strong swimmers. Special circumstances can can make it more common. Lots of helpful yearlings. A widowed beaver (like when mom died) and a long unsafe passage to get to the pond that is farther to swim for young ones than usual. Rusty Cohn found a new beaver family in Napa last year and got very very lucky so I sent lots of photos to Amy.

Yesterday was a fun sort of day, I finally met up with a good-natured young woman who wants to do her 8 hours of volunteer work required for the Ca Naturlist course with Worth A Dam to  benefit beavers. She is not the first crossover from this course to help us, Leslie Mills came through the course years ago and before that Deidre Martin was inspired to help us. So it didn;t come totally as a surprise.

What was a surprise is that she just moved to Martinez and knew NOTHING about our famous beaver story. Imagine that. Not one clip or news story had ever passed her attention. She had Ben’s book but she  hadn’t read it  yet so everything I said came on COMPLETELY fresh ears, She had heard the name Worth A Dam through her horticulture course, Imagine that!

I can’t remember the last time that happened. Maybe its never happened.

So Siobhan Stuart has to complete her hours by the end of April and we agreed on two jobs would require her 8 hours: handing out flyers for the festival at the John Muir Earth Day event and preparing the watercolor paper beaver taiis for kids to make at the festival.

She is excited about the festival too and even though the course is over wants to be part of it. Which is always my secret agenda.

For my part we  gave her a shirt, a tail to decorate, a beaver temporary tattoo and a tour of the many beaver items around the house. Then I taught her how to make deckled edges.