On Saturday the excellent doggie day care program in Martinez (Bring Rover Over) hosted a “Earn an animal badge” event at their facility in town. Girl Scouts from Concord, Clayton, Martinez and Walnut Creek came to learn what they needed to know to earn their badge. There were folks teaching about oil spills, bunny care, making bat boxes, and of course WORTH A DAM to teach about beavers being a keystone species. Each troop rotated through each table so we had to repeat ourselves 5 times and let kids earn a beaver charm necklace by learning how beaver dams made a neighborhood.
Jon, Ron and Lory came along to help, and we were all surprised how tired we were at the end of the two hour day! As always it was a delight to hear children reporting back to me that beaver dams trap leaves and dirt to make rich soil that gets broken down by tiny bugs – (One child even said “microbes!”) which become food for little fish which get eaten by big fish which get eaten in turn by birds and mammals! I especially appreciated seeing their faces look horrified when I talked about people not being sure if the beavers should be trapped originally.
A favorite part was the thoughtful girl who responded to a standard riff that “today was one of the only days children could say the word dam a lot and not get in trouble” by gravely explaining to me that they were actually different words. The swear word was spelled “D-A-M-B“, didn’t I realize?
(But the B was silent.)
This got us ready for Thursday where I will be giving a beaver talk at the Oakland Zoo to keepers and caretakers there. Then beaver friend, and zoo keep Cindy Margulis will be giving us a special zoo tour and showing us amazing zoo things. You probably recognize her from the beaver festival! Oakland has plenty of places where beavers might move in so we might as well get them thinking about solutions and benefits.
