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Generous

heidi08 Beaver Art, Beaver News, Beavers, Beavers or Social Ambasadors, Creative Solutions September 7, 2011

Yesterday was blurry with riches. Out of the blue I received an email from musician Mark Comstock who asked if he could send me a copy of a song he wrote and recorded for the Martinez Beavers. He’s a friend of the Hopeful Romantics who played at the festival this year. Of course, I said “yes” but I honestly had no idea how delightful it would be. I’m going to work on a video with this soundtrack this afternoon so hopefully it will get the attention it deserves. If you can’t wait you can click here

Ballad of the Martinez Beaver or on the photo for a listen.

: Mark Comstock

To top it off, I’m told Disney artist D.W. Murray just completed this illustration of the world-saving dam built by “Slapper and Patty” to protect against the rapid rise of waters from global warming in Jo Marshall’s latest Twig Stories. Jo has already promised us some copies for next years beaver festival, so we’re eager to learn if the wonder-dam was up to the task.

: D.W. Murray

Obviously Slapper and Patty are needed at the moment in drought-burdened Texas to help with the horrific fires which are by far the worst in the state’s history. Go tell the governor that apparently it makes no difference if Texas doesn’t pay attention to climate change, because climate change is still paying attention to YOU.

Tail Painting

heidi08 Beaver Art August 10, 2011

Little caddo was kitnapped – I mean – rescued in the flooded bayou at one month by moderately compassionate Amanda Clingan who agreed to feed and shelter him until he was old enough to move to the zoo. During their days together she experimented by putting a little paint on his feet and tail and voila! Unique beaver artwork!

Amanda sells the artwork and donates the funds to GREAT (Great Results Equine Assissted Therapy) where horses are used to teach impaired children about managing in the world. The money goes to scholarships for the program to help families in need. A recent piece went for 5500.00 dollars!

Now I have nothing but good things to say about Equine Assisted Therapy, but what about beaver assisted therapy? This poor orphan (if he was an orphan) gets exploited for a year and then wins a trip the zoo! We all know that learning about wildlife can open children (and adults) to a whole new way of seeing and thinking. Look at Saturday’s tail contest if you want to find out whether children can be changed by beavers. All the new program needs is a catchy name.

How about B.E.A.V.E.R.?

Better Environmental Awareness Via Eager Rodents.

Amanda Clingan holds up Caddo, a beaver she rescued after flooding at 12-Mile Bayou. Caddo 's artwork has led to more than $5,200 for the Great Results Equine Assisted Therapy riding program in Greenwood. / Greg Pearson/The Times

Beaver Heraldry

heidi08 Beaver Art, Beaver News, Beavers elsewhere, Educational, Environmental, History May 11, 2011

This morning there were at least two beavers, one at the primary and one at the secondary – I feel more comfortable using that label because a thimbleful of work had been done and more was added while I watched. This video shows a kit-yearling adding mud to its base and I was happy to see it. I saw two branches being added as well with an opportunistic muskrat chewing one and swimming away with it. I can’t tell how securely they are anchored because the tide was still very high but it looks slightly more dam-like.

I promised I’d share yesterday’s accidental find, in which I happened upon a page following beaver heraldry through out the ages. These were family crests and city emblems that represented beavers in the artwork because of the similarity in name – castor, bifru, beverlac, beverlay, kastorii…you get the gist. An example is the medieval town of Biberach in Germany, (the equivalent of our ‘beaverton’). It is noted by this crest – check out those beaver-boar tusks! They clearly knew there was something remarkable about those teeth.

Some of them were Dr. Seuss-looking comic beavers, but this next one took my breath away. Nice guard hairs and sharp eyes. Aside from the striking color, check out those toes. The back paw is webbed and the front has claws.

Is that the loveliest thing you ever saw? I’ve begged our foreign correspondent Alex of Frankfurt to translate as much as possible from the original text but I was so happy to find it!

My interview with Paul Haeder has been loaded as a podcast in case you want to listen to the Martinez Beavers on radio. I’m told the link will be good for a few years so if you haven’t time today you can catch it in the future. He also wrote this lovely post about it yesterday: which starts out with the inviting paragraph;

I’m thinking about beavers, as in Martinez, Calif., where John Muir ended up living, and where community activists have been fighting for these aquatic rodents and advocating for kids to learn about beavers’ positive impacts.

It’s a nice website all around. Scroll all the way down to the bottom of the page for a surprising treat.

Now Showing…

heidi08 Beaver Art, Creative Solutions, New Species November 13, 2010

So this is the video splice that’ll be shown tonight at the John Muir Association Conservation Awards, followed by Mike’s acceptance speech. I’m particulary happy with my arteless efforts to combine Part I with the Introduction because it features our beloved beavers. Those are two of our 2008-born yearlings working on the dam – there is a 33% chance that one of them is GQ, which is nice to consider. I’m hoping that the video will perch in Shelton’s consciousness and follow him back home to Yosemite where he’ll tell his fellow rangers about these successful long-term solutions for beaver management.

It should be a grand night, and I learned yesterday that Susan Kirks (of PLAN and badger fame) will be coming so she may want to finish the evening with a little beaver viewing. I already invited our guest speaker but he isn’t sure they’ll be time. I’ll keep nudging and see if that changes.

Last night we saw all three kits at the primary dam and enjoyed the audio of excited little girls watching them from the bridge. “Ohh, daddy that was a beaver!” The other exciting noise of the night was a frogish-toadish ribbet coming from the landscaping on the street. I’ve been hearing it the past few nights so I know it’s local. It isn’t the massive chorus of pacific chorus tree frogs we get after a rain. I only hear it at night, and about 20 feet away from the water. I guess its a toad, but it certainly sounds nothing like the California toad I find when I try to research it. I’ve written a host of creeky experts and I’ll let you know what they say.

For now, shh. Don’t tell the Green Heron.

Beaver ASCII

heidi08 Beaver Art November 10, 2010

There are few things more iconic than an ASCII signature for a wildlife advocate. You may not know the reference but you’ve all seen one. Even the ubiquitous colon and bracket smile is one. Wikipedia says:

ASCII art is a graphic design technique that uses computers for presentation and consists of pictures pieced together from the 95 printable (from a total of 128) characters defined by the ASCII Standard from 1963 and ASCII compliant character sets with proprietary extended characters (beyond the 128 characters of standard 7-bit ASCII). The term is also loosely used to refer to text based art in general. ASCII art can be created with any text editor, and is often used with free-form languages. Most examples of ASCII art require a fixed-width font (non-proportional fonts, as on a traditional typewriter) such as Courier for presentation.

So I’ve seen signatures with ASCII owls and ASCII mountains and recently received an ASCII steelhead and I was just wondering if there were any ASCII beavers out there…see for your self. The three letters at the corner are the initials of the artist.

       .-"""-.__     ltb
      /      ' o'\
   ,-;  '.  :   _c
  :_."\._ ) ::-"
         ""m "m

Excellent start! I’d like the tail to be a little bigger though. Obviously this is a kit.

           .="   "=._.---.
         ."         c ' Y'`p
        /   ,       `.  w_/
    jgs |   '-.   /     /
  _,..._|      )_-\ \_=.\
 `-....-'`------)))`=-'"`'"

I love that nose, eye and ear placement. The accuracy is better than at least half the photos you see of ‘beavers’ on google….since they’re mostly nutria anyway.

                   |     |
                   |     |
                   |    .|
               ____|    .|
             .' .  ).   ,'
           .' c   '7 ) (
       _.-"       |.'   `.
     .'           "8E    |
     |          _}""     |
     |         (   |     |
    .'         )   |     |
.odCG8o_.---.__8E  |    .|
`Y8MMP""       ""  `-...-'   cgmm

But of course this is the blue-ribbon winner. A beaver chewing down a tree! What ambition! Smart work, although the tail is still too small, and if you’re going to fill it with random letters why not spell out BEAVER???

Well, its obviously an artform that takes a certain amount of faith, because the individual lines don’t always look like much but the whole picture usually does. These were borrowed from Chris Johnson’s Website where you can find literally every animal, object, concept, feature or plant imagined. My favorite has to be the Egyptian Ibis which is just lovely. A special treat is the Castle section which will completely blow you away. There are tutorials on how to develop this art yourself and I’m hoping some creative soul with time on their hands will look into adapting our logo. Wouldn’t that make an excellent signature?