Today’s farmers market saw the usual host of beaver questions and answers. A few welcome surprises made an impression worth relaying. First we were greeted by a very enthusiastic beaver-supporting child, who looked familiar and introduced herself as one of our Earth-Day art contest winners. Mom said both her daughters love the animals and when the paper reported the beavers were going to be killed, they were in tears. She kindly added that she would give permission for publication, and I’m eagerly awaiting her email.
A second beaver first was the arrival of two deaf beaver fans who generously explained to me the sign for Beavers. With a combination of lip-reading and finger spelling we were able to exchange information and questions. I had to come home and look up the sign because I liked it so much. Turns out there are a couple of sanctioned ways to say “beavers”, although I think I liked theirs best. Make two curved rabbit ears out of your middle and index fingers for teeth pointing down. Do the same thing with your other hand pointing up, bring them together and “chew.” How sweet is that? Two other possibilities can be seen here, both invoving the forearm bent as a tree. sign
Now usually good beaver news comes in threes, and today was no exception. Robert Rush, the gentleman who took the picture of mom in 2006 brought by a disc of footage he had taken of her, way downstream, past the train bridge. It is lovely and a little alarming to think of her, just starting out, making her way in the world. I wish I had been there when she caught sight of Mr. Beaver. Apparently even though it is difficult for dispersers to find each other, they are choosy, and don’t take the first pair of teeth that comes their way. Well that makes sense I guess: they mate for life.
If you stopped by to talk about volunteering on Saturday, thank you and we’ll see you around nine am. Check the website for updates. The most delightful part of the day was swapping stories with ESA instructor, Rona Zollinger, who is without a doubt one of the coolest humans around. Her students are “lottery lucky” and I know the district is counting its blessings. She described how exciting the Nov 7th meeting was, and talked about feeling “high for a week” afterwards!!! I couldn’t agree more! I thought it was three hours of the end of “Its a wonderful life” at the time but have since met those who felt the riff-raff was a little too vocal that evening. Not me. I thought that from every level of society we were an eloquent, impassioned community, and I’m grateful that I got to be there.
Thanks all for another friendly Beaver sunday. We received 30 dollars in donations today and lots of promises of help. Remember to keep an eye this week for our newly emerging kits. Last year they were first filmed on June 10th.
