Well there’s been a nice flurry of attention on the new kit. When I got to work yesterday there was a message from KGO and a call from KPIX who has sent a reporter out to the dams and wanted someone to meet him. I could just barely shuffle patients about for the phone interview, but couldn’t possibly make the dams, so I called Lory to see if she’d be willing. She was making potato salad and not at all happy about the assignment, but she gamely took up the gauntlet, wore a wire for the interview, and met with the reporter. On the phone I told him where to find footage of the new kit so he could run it with the story — martinezbeavers,org — he repeated back “Spontaneousbeavers.org?” which made me laugh very hard indeed.
I needn’t have told him where to look for footage because obviously they reviewed the entire website like it was a grocery store after Katrina and just looted their way among the shelves, picking whatever they wanted. (Lory assures me when it aired there was a tag on the screen saying it was from us). I counted 10 swipes of my very best beaver footage spanning 5 years. That’s some hefty pick-pocketing! Well, its all for a good cause right? If you haven’t seen the whole thing, scroll down for the report. Here’s the thing. John Ramos asks at the end why the beaver stay here, and Lory seems to wonder too. I can tell you the answer easily.
WE DON”T KILL THEM.
Pretty much every other city creek or drainage pond in the East Bay or heck, the entire state, beavers that settle get very quickly dispatched. But here in Martinez they are safe. And that is obviously worth putting up with cameras and garbage trucks and wrapped trees and homeless drunks for.
That being said here is some more precious dimly lit footage to swipe…
Look at dad’s lumpy head and you can clearly see our father is a father again. Amazing! Now if only the country would stop celebrating its birth and stay quiet we might get some of these photos in decent lighting!