Yesterday was a busy day for beaver supporters in Martinez. We carpooled to the Oakland zoo for their continuing education brown-bag series, where about 75 zoo keepers and volunteers gathered for the brown bag series – this time featuring beavers! It was a lovely hall with a great setup and many familiar faces dotted through the crowd. They were the kind of cheerful intelligent animal champions that laughed at every joke, oohed in all the right places and audibly gasped at Moses’ footage of mom beaver walking on her hind legs to work on the dam.
Although it was working perfectly when I set it up at first, the AV equipment developed an imperfect relationship with my mac, which the techs solved by telling the computer that it was projecting the image onto another computer to my right. This weirdly meant I couldn’t see the screen and some of the images that projected were blurry, but I forged bravely onward and it turned out alright anyway. Afterwards the woman in charge of the series told me this was one of the best presentations they ever had!
Here’s what enthusiastic zoo volunteer Cindy Margulis posted on facebook later:
Congratulations, Heidi! you did an AWESOME presentation today at the Oakland Zoo about those truly famous Martinez beavers! Zookeepers, docents, volunteers, intern and other zoo staff all enjoyed your delightful and insightful presentation. You have won a whole new cadre of beaver fans … and inspired everyone!
Gosh, could she have picked a better compliment? Thanks Cindy. I LOVE the idea that there is this army of beaver believers waiting by their creeks all over Alameda County with torches and pitchforks ready to defend the first brave disperser that shows up!
After the talk another woman told me that I did a delightful presentation and was “So Charming!” which made me laugh all day because obviously I’m sure that’s exactly how the mayor and a certain creek-side property owner think of me too.
Charming.
