The works of the beaver have ever intensely interested the human mind. Beaver works may do for children what schools, sermons, companions, and even home sometimes fail to do, develop the power to think. No boy or girl can become intimately acquainted with the ways and works of these primitive folk without having the eyes of observation opened, and acquiring a permanent interest in the wide world in which we live.
Enos Mills: In Beaver World
Shneim asar chodesh – Twelve months
Those mourning a parent additionally observe a twelve-month period (Hebrew: שנים עשר חודש, shneim asar chodesh ; “twelve months”), counted from the day of death. During this period, most activity returns to normal, although the mourners continue to recite the mourner’s kaddish as part of synagogue services for eleven months.
A year ago this morning I was waken by a phone call from Moses who had been standing at Starbucks watching over mom beaver as she huddled on a little patch of land, looking weak and disoriented. Jon and I hurried down to check after calling the others. We found her chattering and confused, at one point bumping into the wall while she swam. Cheryl drove down with an animal crate from IBRRC and we made the decision to pick her up and take her to Lindsay, where she was examined and euthanized.
Was it really a year ago?
It used to inexplicably feel like it happened a million years ago and like it happened yesterday. Like if you could inhale the stale breath of loss deeply enough you could trace it all the way back to the tremor of that morning – when loss was merely feared. Now the grief has had a year to sink in, the mud has piled high, and mom’s tombstone, in the jewish tradition, can be officially unveiled.
This morning I brought down some flowers and was happy to see that her children were observing the day in most commonly observed beaver tradition: doing what she taught them. Like all mothers, she obviously tucked a note in their jeans genes as she was leaving. They must have just got around to reading it because they’ve been hard at work being the beavers she meant for them to be. The note listed her priorities for them, and what appear to have become their priorities for themselves:
1. First Build a dam
2. Then Build a lodge
The secondary dam is looking very solid, and no one was bothering with it but a happy kingfisher who wondered why I wouldn’t leave so he could dive for dinner in peace.
Farther up stream, above the primary dam, two busy beavers cast ripples in the water.
Huge balls of mud were being rolled out of lodge number 1 and great excavations were occurring at the site of lodge number 2. I’m not yet sure where they’ll settle lodge nuber 3 but they obviously have plans in mind. Two beavers were working this morning and when the water wasn’t cloudy with their efforts it was emerald translucent glass.
Standing at the Escobar bridge, as I had stood for so many mornings when our colony was just starting out, I was struck by how much had happened and how very little had changed. Beavers had died and beavers were living. Dams washed out and dams were standing. Trees had fallen and trees were growing. Both banks of the creek were layered with an explosion of willow, growing up and out and over. This lush canopy was rich enough to cover a multitude of scars: the holes where mom sat when she was ill, the collapsed lodge that flooded and imploded in March, even the mistaken sheetpile that sealed a property-owners land and our beavers’ fate – covered over with new growth. Everything dead was covered by everything living.
I was reminded of a Carl Sandburg poem, which you should listen to just because of the musicality of his voice, another living thing covering ideas of death.
And mom, who is gone and not forgotten, we remember you today and are grateful for the very long visit you paid to Martinez.
Hardened beaver advocate, Abi Voss, is marching door to door with a petition to save the beavers living in the lake in her backyard. Seems there were a family of 5 beavers paddling about and doing beaver-y things until the Terrapin Home Oweners Association got some complaints that they were eating her neighbors trees. They brought in a trapper who was able to kill three of the beavers, and Abi is trying to save the remaining two. The whole inspiring tale (tail?) is gently unfolded by reporter David Pierce here.
Now, remember, it’s June, so when Abi says they’re only “two beavers left” I’m inclined to think five or six, because there were almost certainly kits born this year that no one has seen yet – certainly not two weeks ago when the trapper was called in. Hopefully they’ll be old enough to survive without mom or Dad as long as there’s some family around. (Martinez knows all about that….) I’m sure that upon reflection the THOA will hope their contractor failed to kill two, so there’s someone left to take care of the young in the lodge. I wonder what kind of press adorable Abi would get if her sign said “Save the Orphans”.
Her Dad demonstrates that beaver advocates hail from sturdy stock:
Voss said that there are alternate ways of alleviating the problem without removing or killing the animals. He said beavers have left trees in his backyard alone after he surrounded them with chicken wire. “Chicken wire only cost me $5,” Voss said. “It is not a big expense.” Voss said that people like him who live near a watershed and a lake should plan to “live with nature” and expect to see creatures like beavers outdoors.
Father and daughter’s facebook page is here, in case you want to send some solidarity and love their way. I will be sending him the ‘painting trees with sand’ recipe forthwith. In the meantime, watch the adorable DVD and remember how powerful the voices of children can be. I can’t think of a better start to any campaign than this.
Ohhhhhh and HAPPY SOLSTICE BEAVERS!!! After today your work days will get longer and ours will get shorter!
The Miwok tribe ranged from the north coast to the Sierra Foothills and Yosemite. They were the tribe associated with acorn grinding and if you’ve never seen a grinding rock you should stop by Chaw’se on your way to the Sierras someday and imagine all those lost conversations that must have taken place while the women worked side-by-side. 
Kroeber was especially interested in them because he believed they were one of the few native american tribes whose spirituality incorporated totems. We are particularly interested in them because two thirds of the tribe lived where beavers supposedly didn’t.
Yesterday I found an origin myth that I think makes a pincushion of that particular belief. It is an origin myth recorded by Edward Winslow Gifford in 1917 – 5 years before any beaver were reintroduced any where. Its the story about how the Miwok learned to make arrows for hunting. and since they were completely dependent on this adaption it is a tale of some importance.
The tale is told with a sing-song repetitive pattern in which every important idea is repeated more than once. It begins with the two brothers Dove and Prairie Falcon (how can that end well?) bemoaning their inability to hunt.
“What shall we do, brother? What shall we do? I would like to hunt. I do not know how we are to hunt. I do not know how we are to hunt. I do not know how we shall be able to hunt. I should like very much to hunt. I do not know how we can make arrows. We have nothing with which to cut. We know of nothing with which to cut. I do not know how we can hunt. We have nothing with which to cut. We do not know how to cut. I would like very much to hunt, brother. I do not know how we are to arrange it, but we will try. We have nothing with which to cut. I should like you and me to hunt together, brother. We have nothing with which to hunt.”
Wow, reading that paragraph is like sitting in a small room with an anxious asperger’s child, but I digress. It gets the point across rather vividly. The brothers had NO IDEA what to do. They NEEDED a solution. I guess the thinking is that when you fully grasp their desperation you might be more inclined to understand if not accept their solution.
“Let us throw our grandmother into the water. If she does not want to go, we will pull her in, We will throw the old woman, our grandmother, into the water. After you have thrown her into the water, pull her out quickly. Pull her out quickly. Do not keep her in the water long. Do not keep her in the water long.”
Well, that’s probably not the first thing I would have tried, but let’s see how it works.
Then Dove went. Dove went. He threw his grandmother into the water, threw her into the water. After he had thrown her into the water, be pulled her out quickly. He pulled her out quickly. His brother said to him, “Pull one of her teeth. We will make a knife of it.” Then he pulled one of her teeth, pulled one of her teeth. After they obtained the tooth, they commenced to cut, commenced to cut.
At this point I understand if you’re thinking doubtfully, hey I thought you said this was going to be about beavers! Not elder abuse. Two juvenile delinquents dismantling their grandmother for parts is hardly the basis for a creation myth. When do we get to the part about beavers? Bear with me, it’s coming. I will spare you the part where they saw a pine bough with her tooth and take out her sinew and use it for a string. She’s not exactly dead, but she’s not happy.
Their grandmother went into the water and cried and worried about herself. She said, “I did not think my boys would treat me this way.” Then the grandmother, who had turned into Beaver, said, “I will have revenge upon those boys.” She told the water to drown Prairie Falcon. The water came, while Prairie Falcon was digging, and drowned him. Dove escaped.
Whoa! Didn’t see that coming did you! Grandma turns into a beaver and she’s pretty homicidal. Dove wails and cries (that’s why he’s always in mourning, get it?) and eventually Grandma makes sure he and Prairie Falcon gets dragged about the countryside and scraped pretty badly. “Spark” brings them back to life and they begin to see the error of their ways.
Now they had no grandmother. Prairie Falcon cried because his grandmother had turned into Beaver. They both cried and cried for their grandmother. They did not know how to get back their grandmother. They went along the river. They saw Beaver In the riffle, They said, “There is Beaver.” Beaver was their grandmother. They used to take their grandmother everywhere they went, but they lost their grandmother because of the arrows. At last they abandoned the search for her and went home. Their grandmother had turned into Beaver. Everybody made arrows thereafter. Dove, cried for his grandmother. Prairie Falcon cried, but they made arrows. They lost then, grandmother because of the arrows.
So Beaver helped Miwok make arrows. Meaning they made arrows sometimes out of beaver teeth, or used beaver teeth knives to carve arrows out of other material.Meaning that they had beavers. Meaning that historically beavers had a wider a range in California than Grandmothers.
The hero who wrote down this story nearly 100 years ago was Edward W. Gifford. He was born in Oakland and took over the native museum in Yosemite from Kroeber when he retired. In all his prodigious work documenting native customs and people I can find no mention of his heritage, but looking at that very gentle face I would argue that his ethnicity speaks for itself.
