Follow-ups needed: Here is the chalk-masterpiece by featured artist Ray Cirinio at yesterday’s Santa Barbara festival. Pretty nice work. (Although the beaver has way too many whiskers for my inner critic. He’s not a walrus for pete’s-sake!) The hands are lovely and to form, though. Everything else is very convincing, because he’s probably actually SEEN the other things…hmm.
I wanted to be regaled with hundreds of beaver illustrations this morning, but Ray seems to be the only one online so far. Let’s hope his work inspires many others. 
You can see what a large undertaking it all is. One of my favorite parts of working with Amy is being there when she has Jon help her lay out the grid for her initial artwork. It’s always soo auspicious!
My mother brought over the ‘actual’ newspaper from last weeks Oakley bruhaha. This is the front page of the local news section. That’s some pretty good product placement! Now everyone in the town knows they had beavers.
The folks in England have been working round the clock to promote the next phase of beaver reintroduction. One of them recently shared this lovely info-graphic illustration with I thought I should pass along. Pretty nice, isn’t it?
And since its memorial day I want to make sure you’ve all seen this, If you were alive in 1918 you either died or knew sometime that had. I’m sure my 1898 house could tell stories about wearing masks or social distancing in those days. We are all so very lucky to be reading this and not living it. This represents 1% of the total number that died from this virus.
Beavers are the great architects of American ponds and streams. The North American beaver competes with the Eurasian beaver to be the 2nd largest rodent in the world, after another semi-aquatic mammal, the South American Capybara.
They also provide game for hunters and fishermen, and a place to drink for deer and other mammals like moose, who browse the sodium rich water plants, often diving beneath the water surface to access the plants. Car accidents with moose are usually caused by moose coming up onto the road to lick the salt we spray around to melt the ice.
The Campbell river flows through Vancouver island and into the straiht of Georgia beside which this store is located. The strait is pure Pacific ocean with high waves, salty water and resident orcas so you can imagine for yourself why this parking lot looks like a much better deal to our young friend. The store is about 100 miles up the strait from Nanaimo Island which we’ve talked about a lot and these happy beavers were lovingly filmed.
