Yesterday was solstice and I couldn’t imagine spending it without the beavers. I remembered how every solstice for the past 8 years we have watched our kits swim into the world, usually unsupervised. I couldn’t bear the thought that things were different this year, so off we went.
On Friday I had been contacted by Sheri Harstein, a wildlife photographer and friend of Sherry Guzzi’s and the beavers in Taylor Creek. She and Ted showed me her video project of beavers through the seasons when we were in Santa Barbara for the salmon conference. Some of our visitor’s lovely photographs can be seen here. She was a regular reader of the blog and said she wanted to meet me and bring a donation to the silent auction: Two BEAVER cutting boards with her beautiful photographs embedded in them! (Honestly, you need to bid on these.)
We sat at the primary dam and talked about how she knew of the beavers. She had first connected with our story when Thomas Knudson interviewed me for our historic paper in the Sacramento Bee, and since then had becoming an avid reader. She said ridiculously gratifying things like what a lovely writer I was and how remarkable it was the the website was always updated by 10:00 am every single day! We told her urban beaver tales of city battles, false legs in the dam, homeless holding lights for Mooses and the dead body floating in the creek in 2011. At one point she went off in pursuit of a Great Egret and Jon trotted off to the secondary to check what was going on. And I was left alone in amiable silence with this:
Did I just see what I thought I did?
When they came back they were disbelieving. It couldn’t be the new kit. He was too big. He dove too well. It had to be the small yearling. But we had watched all the yearlings and Dad go over the primary dam earlier. I reminded that maybe this kit was big for a first sighting, but he was exactly the right size for late June.
There was a little more disbelief until he swam close enough for everyone to see his tail, which was the final convincing factor necessary to confirm his kit status. Finally we get to see the sneak! That and the fact that he was a little more playful than the other beavers. Just look at how he handles the water stream through the gap from the rising tide.
Yup, that’s a baby. The 7th year of beavers born in Martinez (no kits in 2011 after mom died).
Were there more to be seen? Will we get footage of mom and the kit playing? Will the yearlings befriend him? Will we get to hear him whine? A million adventures waited. What a great way to start the summer! I promise we didn’t drive home singing this song – but we might as well have been.
Sheri’s much more polished video from last night:
