Last night was a pretty magical Night-at-the-museum kind of beaver presentation. The Randall Museum is in a lovely location on a hill in the middle of Victorian apartments in San Francisco towards golden gate park. The museum was a user friendly wonder who’s watchman asked me about the Belarus beaver attack. The theater was an actual lecture hall with raised audience and screen. And the hosts, Patrick and Jill Schlemmer have been running the naturalist talks for fifteen years and knew exactly how to do everything!
I had expected a handful of attendees but it was nearly full and the audience was attentive, intelligent, receptive and very pro beaver. A few old friends like Megan of the Otter Ecology Project showed up. They asked excellent questions about meadow succession and gestation period and I felt the blossoming of beaver seeds taking root in very fertile soil.
Afterwards a young woman from the audience came and introduced herself as the Senior Exhibit Content Developer for the California Academy of Sciences who said they were working on a beaver exhibit and were particularly interested in the Martinez Beaver story, and would I be willing to talk?
Go ahead, I’ll wait while you guess what I answered.
