We had some visitors from Cupertino last night who wanted to see the beavers I spoke about on Saturday. They got an early showing of our biggest kit and dashed off to Lemon Grass for dinner, leaving regulars Jon and Jean to watch and see what might happen next. The two larger kits appeared from upstream, and the smaller one (who isn’t that small anymore!) came from downstream. They engaged in some nuzzling, pushing and wrestling and then settled down to some fun with the flat board that has been floating in the water for a while. To the great delight of their audience, they chewed on it, nosed it, pushed it, and generally had a ‘tug-of-board’. It was a great show!
It has been worth noticing how our beavers interact with ‘processed’ and cut wood. Sometimes people see sawed branches on the dam and assume that we have put them there. The truth is that cut branches often appear at the dam because the beavers are perfectly willing to pull them out of the creek or off the bank and use them for building material. They aren’t picky. We’ve seen them use plywood, traffic cones, beer cans and plastic bottles to stop the flow. Audrey Tourney, founder of the Aspen Wildlife Sanctuary, wrote about beavers she was rehabilitating in her home who used newspapers, towels, foot stools and coffee mugs to build little structures in her living room.
Audrey Tourney with a Baby Beaver
Necessity is the mother of invention! But I’m pretty sure beavers are its children!
There are a few tickets left for tomorrow nights John Muir Conservation Awards, which will honor Jay Holcomb of IBRRC, Nature Bridge, The Lindsay Wildlife Museum, and our friend Mike Callahan of Beaver Solutions. It will be hosted by Shelton Johnson, the dynamic park ranger from the Ken Burns series. Even our friend Susan Kirks of badger fame wrote about it. (Shhh! Don’t tell Mike or Skip that she accidentally turned them into the same person!) If I were a beaver supporter I would go to show your enthusiasm for the conservation community, drink a nice chardonnay and eat delicious catered treats and buy a signed copy of Shelton’s new book.
It goes without saying that you meet the VERY BEST SORT of people at these events.
And surely all God’s people, however serious and savage, great or small like to play. Whales and elephants, dancing, humming gnats, and invisibly small mischievous microbes—all are warm with divine radium and must have lots of fun in them.
—John Muir, The Story of My Boyhood and Youth
