What we did today!

Yesterday was a rocket ship of explosive activity! Wild Kingdom and Cockpits and Squid Disection and Duct tape wallets and Zip Lines and Rock Walls and Scuba Diving and Girl Power and lots and lots of pink! Rows and rows of tents, many of them pink, in the fair grounds where camping was allowed. Face paint and s’mores and llamas and circuit boards and floating sharks and astronauts in spacesuits. Words fail me. In the middle of all this someone came to invite us to display at Green Kids day on the Microsoft campus and I honestly wanted to laugh, “are you kidding?”

There was a moment in this massive wave of a day where I looked at Cheryl in a panic and said “THEY JUST KEEP COMING!!!!!!!” And it seemed liked that most times, clusters of girls in matching shirts with badges and bracelets and eager faces. Most of them enormously polite with thank yous and questions, with an endless stream of exhausted moms (and a few dad’s) shepharding them to through the many booths, waiting patiently while they painted with pine needles or drew in black lighting or added wildlife to a flag.

Imagine this scene over again at least a thousand times….

Three top conversations of the day would have to be

• the mom who grew up in Sonoma who said her Dad had tried to save beavers on their land 10 years ago and is going to send me a photo of him standing by tree stump they chewed.
• the woman who had gone to the beaver festival and said her daughter had painted a tile and STILL HAD HER TAIL!!!!
• The woman from the San Joaquin watershed council in Fresno who said that she had called fish and game many times about protecting trees and was outraged that they had never told her about wire wrapping or sand painting!

I’m sure there are others that will come back to me as the sensation creeps back to my vocal cords. In the meantime, this came when I got home. The entire issue is about beavers and wetlands.

And an excellent conclusion to Thomas Knudson’s piece on Wildlife Services this morning with information about non-lethal methods. Other than the fact that I am fiercely disappointed that it doesn’t mention flow devices to control beaver problems, its a very good read! Next time, right Tom?