chewed1

Mom

heidi08 Beaver Behavior, Beaver News, Beaver Rehabilitation June 29, 2010

UPDATE:

Mom beaver was examined at Lindsay and found to be in a very poor state. She had lost a great deal of weight and weighed in at only 34 lbs. The exam showed that one of her upper incisors had broken, and the lower incisors had penetrated her upper palate. The wound was infected and it was thought she was not strong enough to treat. She was euthanized and Jon and I brought her body was brought to UCDavis for necropsy. It is essential that we learn about the cause of her death so that we can be sure the kits aren’t at risk. Clearly her teeth grew too long because she wasn’t feeding properly to sharpen them down, and this was likely the result of another health problem which made it hard to feed. It is unbelievable to me that the kits were first seen 19 days ago. She just barely made it long enough to send them into the world. They are 7-8 weeks old now. She gave them her very last strength, and for that I will always be grateful.

I got a call this morning from Moses who was at Starbucks and had been watching mom and trying to encourage her to go downstream. When Jon & I got there she was curled up in the grass on the starbucks side, very listless, soaking wet and disoriented. She tried once to swim and went across the creek and bumped into the cement wall. Then she came back to the grass and just lay there.

Lots of people were starting to come and watch, and mom was in no condition to get back to the lodge. She was staggering when she tried to move and her teeth were clicking sometimes, you could hear them. Lory came down after my email. Cheryl came out with an animal crate from IBRRC. She and Jon walked down from ward street in the creek. Mom didn’t move or react at all to their approach. Cheryl walked on the creekside and Jon carried the crate and set it with the door open in front of her. Cheryl put a towel in the crate and wrapped a towel around mom from behind and lifted her a little and she went peacefully into the crate. She turned around so she was facing the door, and just laid down. Cheryl and jon laid a towel over the crate and carried it down through the water and back up onto the bank at ward street.

The four of us drove to the Wildlife Hospital at Lindsay and Cheryl’s friend Pam(whose Martinez husband is appears in the video letter to the mayor) met us. Mom was peaceful and not reactive during the ride, chewing sometimes on her towel. She did not smell at all of castor meaning her oil glands had probably stopped working so she was completely unable to groom herself. They brought her in and will call us when they know anything. The vet on duty used to work with Cheryl at IBRRC so she knows all about the beavers and we told them about her condition. On the way we called Jean and she met us afterwards for breakfast where we talked about it.

Honestly when I went down this morning I purposely decided not to bring a camera because I thought it would just be too sad, but I wish I had filmed it so you could all see how completely calm and unpanicked mom was. she just was in no condition to react, and if we had left her alone she was in such a visible part of the creek that people would have intervened and/or called animal control. This way she was completely protected by us and not at all agitated or frightened. It was almost like she knew we wouldn’t harm her, and it certainly felt right, after everything we have been through and all the mornings I have spent with mom to have her riding peacefully in my subaru. We will be out tonight to make sure the kits are feeding and happy. It was becoming clear that the family has already transitioned and the kits have been relying on the yearlings care more and more, which is just like we’d hope.

I’m very grateful for everyone’s help this morning, and grateful that mom gave us the easiest possible decision about whether, when and how to intervene. The saddest part for me is thinking about how hard she must have worked to stick around and care for those three new lives. We can all be grateful for her remarkable parenting and the 15 live births she allowed us all to enjoy.

I thought this morning of this quote from one of my favorite books ever written. It is an amazing tale of a young girl during the holocaust, fearlessly and compassionately narrated by “Death”.

Lastly; the Hubermans

Hans.

Papa

He was tall in the bed and I could see the silver through his eyelids. His soul sat up. It met me. Those kinds of souls always do – the best ones. The ones who rise up and say, “I know who you are and I am ready. Not that I want to go, of course, but I will come.” Those souls are always light because more of them have been put out. More of them have already found their way to other places. This one was set out by the breath of an accordion, the odd taste of champagne in summer, and the art of promise-keeping. He lay in my arms and rested.

Markus Zusak: The Book Thief

Come tonight if you want to see reassuring beavers and comfort your hearts. Thank you all for your caring and concern. I will make sure to update as soon as we know anything about mom’s health.

Heidi

Sharon Brown: Beaver Advocate

heidi08 Beaver Rehabilitation, Beavers, Beavers elsewhere, Friends of Martinez Beavers May 3, 2010

I saw this photo and Sharon’s facebook page and knew you’d want to see it too. Beavers: Wetlands & Wildlife was enormously helpful back in the early days of struggling to slow down the city’s beaver-extermination-runaway-train. To give a little context to this enviable photo, she put together a bio for some nice monday morning reading. Enjoy!

Sharon Brown is a biologist and co-founder of the educational nonprofit Beavers: Wetlands & Wildlife (BWW, BeaversWW.org). Her work involves consulting, writing and giving programs nationwide to help people understand the benefits of beaver wetlands and peacefully resolve conflicts with keystone species.

Brown volunteered as a licensed wildlife rehabilitator for 15 years, and the photo shows her swimming with an orphaned beaver kit. She explains, “This is Bounce, a kit I rehabbed with her three siblings, after their mother was run over. The kits were a bit nervous about the big pond after paddling in a bathtub—and I later found a large snapping turtle there that I relocated—so I swam with them a few times.”

She documented highlights in the lives of the four kits in the video “Hi, I’m a Beaver” that has been shown at museums (soon it will be available as a DVD). Brown and her husband Owen are featured in a “Coexisting with Beavers” DVD that includes half an hour of beaver natural history plus a 12-minute segment on installing a Flexible Leveler to manage water levels at road culverts or beaver dams.

Brown is the editor of Beaversprite, the quarterly of Beavers: Wetlands & Wildlife (BWW), and wrote the script for the nonprofit’s website. She has had articles and photos published in a variety of national magazines and taught college level biology courses prior to concentrating on beavers.

She became interested in beavers after meeting Dorothy Richards, who studied that species for 50 years at Beaversprite Sanctuary in New York’s Adirondack Mountains. After Mrs. Richards’ death in 1985, Brown and her husband Owen created the nonprofit to honor the “Beaver Woman’s” legacy by focusing on the ecological significance of beavers. She says, “Beavers can help combat climate change because the wetlands they maintain absorb carbon dioxide, the major greenhouse gas, and beaver dams slow the flow of streams which lessens the damage done by major floods and droughts.”

The Browns share their 300-acre Wildsprite Sanctuary in the Adirondack foothills with a variety of wildlife, including two beaver families.

Familiar Face

heidi08 Beaver News, Beaver Rehabilitation December 26, 2009

So last night I got a call from video man Moses. He’d been out in the wee hours of Christmas Eve shooting a little footage. Seems he got several beavers, some very chewed trees and a lovely sunrise. Guess what else he got footage of? Mom!

We haven’t seen Mother beaver since September, and some of us were more than a little worried she might have died. Her eye had been looking worse and worse, and we assumed her health had something to do with the absence of kits this year. Be that as it may, Moses brought over footage he had taken at 5 in the morning on Christmas that shows her happily chewing and eating willow.

The good news is that her right eye looks better. The bad news is that her left eye looks affected also. This is clearly sticking with her, although neither side looks damp or crusted like it used to do. Jeff Alvarez told us that if she had rubbed off her fur because of an irritation or condition, it would take a good while to grow back, so its hard to know if this will change.

Still, its lovely to see her again, steadily swimming, climbing, foraging and chewing. She was clearly untroubled by her condition and took it in stride. I’ll try that also.

Just read this news. Really heartbreaking. I guess you were ready, Vic. But I wasn’t.

Oh THAT kinda typhoon….

heidi08 Beaver News, Beaver Rehabilitation, New Species October 14, 2009

Wow what a rainy rainy rainy day yesterday was. The dams were relieved of their wood by 10:00 am and by evening downtown Martinez had received 2.88 inches. The paper talked about what a relief it was that this didn’t happen when we were already saturated. They bemoaned traffic, hillsides, and school children but didn’t once stop to mention beavers!

The flow device is still there, although that was some massive water pressure. Honestly all of Martinez will be lost or destroyed one day and that pipe and cage will still be standing. We checked this morning and the structure of the main dam and neighbor dam was still defined, but most of the wood on top had been washed clean. No beavers in sight, but we don’t always see them right away after a storm. They wait a while to make sure its worth fixing.

If it stays dry today you might try popping by tonight. Sometimes the big rains bring out the grown ups, and it would be nice to see mom and dad at work again.

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On a entirely different note, you might check out the website of our new friend “the skunk whisperer” who has been chatting with Cheryl on twitter. Ned Bruha’s “Total Wildlife Control” relies on humane management in Oklahoma and has been doing some amazing work in that part of the woods. His recent rescue of a skunk with his head in a peanut butter jar made lots of local newscasts this week.

I think his pragmatic “hands-on” advocacy is invaluable in our new political climate where caring about the environment has become a code word for “Bolshevik” (See Green is the new Red!) I thought the Humane Society might enjoy connecting with him and broadening their “crazy-librul-bunny-lover image” by adding a voice from this middle america sportsman to the mix. I wrote John Hadidian (the director of urban wildlife for HSUS) and he said they were aware of him and had connected in the past. I realized how little I understood about Oklahoma’s wildlife attitudes when I read about him and saw A) the woman who stood there protecting the trapped skunk and B) the news media who ran the story and C) all the locals who watched this story. Sometimes people surprise you, (and not in a beaver-killing way).

It’s good to know that there are friends of wildlife in Oaklahoma. Worth A Dam will make sure to refer questions his way, and if he wants help hooking up with the top flow-device minds in the country, we’ll be happy to assisst!