Cindy Margulis – Worth A Dam

heidi at zoo

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.

badges

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.