Oh, it’s good to be home! That was too close for comfort! How I missed you! Attentive readers may have noticed that the website was disabled from Saturday morning until last night at 9:15, (but who’s counting) with all sorts of horrific happenings in between, including a starter site from WordPress inviting me to start all over again! When I logged in for help and it said ‘welcome NEW user’ I thought I was done for. Then I couldn’t even log in at all. It was like I never existed.
This time it wasn’t my fault as I’m told the servers crashed and our overlords at Bluehost spent superbowl weekend trying to fix them, then trying to restore all the websites they had erased in the process. During the long, bleak tea-time of the soul where my work for the past 4 years was erased, I wondered what I would do if it was never restored. I wondered if I would start over or simply move to another state and pretend none of this had ever happened. What would you do?
Most of the website was recovered last night, but all links were broken and all links to the website were still dread 404’s. I called this morning and got that fixed so now we can visit the menu bar and the archives. There may still be a few unconnected surprises down the road to deal with, but the worst is definitely over. Sunday I went down to visit beavers and remember how it all began, with no website, no camera – just my curiosity and two beavers. Reed was swimming about at the footbridge and went to sleep in the bank hole under the missing tree. Another yearling joined him. They didn’t seem upset about the server.
What’s remarkable to me, is that after all that happened and all the panicked tech calls all the distressed emails I returned from readers this weekend and all the angst and stress I tried not to feel – we appear to have lost ONE DAY of our 4-year chronicle. One. Saturday’s news.
So in the interest of full restoration and harmony allow me to repeat that we will be at the Flyway Festival in Mare Island next weekend teaching folks about the relationship between beavers and birds. You should stop by and say hi, its a great place to learn about birds, try some new binoculars or hear about the Martinez Beavers!
How Martinez saved its beavers and helped its birds In 2007, the town of Martinez was faced with a problem. Beavers had built a dam in a downtown creek already prone to flooding. No one expected the massive public response which forced the city to control the beaver dam, humanely. New wetlands made and maintained by the beavers since that time have created remarkable habitat for steelhead, otter, mink and a variety of new birds. Come see how a community allowed beavers to restore its wetlands, increase the fish and wildlife populations and broaden its bird count. Beavers really are Worth A Dam!
Heidi Perryman, Ph.D.is an “accidental beaver advocate” who began filming the beavers in 2006, served on the subcommittee that addressed beaver management and started the organization “Worth A Dam” to deal with their continued care. She presented in Oregon at the State of the Beaver Conference and is currently working with a multidisciplinary team on beaver historic prevalence and the role of beaver-assisted salmon recovery in California.
Oh, and I missed you! Can you tell?
