There was a fair amount of interest in the ‘beaver call’ video I posted a few days ago. Drs Lixing-Sun and Bekoff had never heard it before and thought the beaver was an adult and sounded distressed. Neither of which I agreed with. The more pragmatic Skunk Whisperer from Oklahoma had the interesting observation that the beaver was actually IMITATING the human. Whoa. Then a favorite rehabber with massive ground experience with actual beavers sent me this story. She said I could share it but not her name because of the unusual (but totally understandable) care conditions.
That was very neat! The yearling sure seemed to be responding to the human’s call. Who knows what the human was saying? Whether he was mimicking the person or responding to him, it was a little yearling communicating with the person.
We once had a beaver who we hand raised. When he got critically ill (Tyzzers disease), he was sleeping with us.”Bruce” always slept right in my arms. Every morning the alarm would ring and I’d moan and reach over to hit the snooze button, One morning after about a week, the alarm rang and before I could groan Bruce began moaning. It was hysterical. Every morning after that he’d do it.
He would often mimic the tone of my voice of things I’d say frequently. One time he had an accident and when I walked in he said UH OH in the same tones my voice would say it. Of course he couldn’t enunciate it, but he got the sounds right with his whiny voice. So it would not surprise me if that beaver was imitating the person calling to him.
Hahaha! Now that I can believe. Experience trumps research! I can totally imagine that happening. And it is hysterical to think of these careful lurking trappers trying to master what they think will lure a beaver, and actually just giving the beaver something to learn to copy! Beaver mocking birds!
I discovered a new free tool on the internet playground yesterday. In case you want to play too it’s called FLAMING TEXT and here’s the link. You enter in the word you want and then ‘shop’ for all kinds of logos, backgrounds and fonts. Then tweak it to your satisfaction by adding or removing colors, glows, etc. I have only made it through ten pages of options and there are several. It would be a great pass-time if you were recovering from knee surgery or waiting for Godot.
Which means it is very, very dangerous.
I made the above graphic yesterday to match our logo and make letterhead, because I spent the day imploring folks to give to the silent auction at the beaver festival. Zoos, museums, amusement parks, cruises, excursions, you name it, I asked for it. You’ve heard of “Dialing for dollars”? Well this was Begging for Beavers. We’ll see what it generates. At least it looked looked sharp.
We even got our insurance yesterday for the festival, which meant we could turn in the application for the park permit. Now we need to coordinate the exhibits so that people show up for the grand event! Of course the really fun thing would be to combine the images with graphics to make something impressive. I decided I had to try and get this message out. If I can’t send it to the governor at least I can submit it with payment in every water bill.
