“Pay No Attention to the Man Behind the Curtain!”

“The Road goes ever on and on

Down from the door where it began.

Now far ahead the Road has gone,

And I must follow, if I can,

Pursuing it with eager feet,

Until it joins some larger way

Where many paths and errands meet.

And whither then? I cannot say”

— J.R.R. Tolkien (The Fellowship of the Ring)

Yesterday was my official day off. For the past week I’ve been rushing around with Christmas chores, getting dinner for the parents or things ready for the new calendar year at the office. Soon there will be a Worth A Dam New Years dinner to get organized but yesterday was all my own. And I spent it languidly with my very favorite subject.

In the morning I got an email from a wildlife rehab woman in Illinois who had been contacted by another wildlife friend who had taken in an orphaned beaver at birth. She was looking for some help with socialization and long term placement and did I know anybody?

Gosh. Illinois. My only contacts there were the friends of the Lincoln Park beavers and one benevolent reporter, but I didn’t think they could help. I put out a general APB to all the beaver contacts in the country, and one to Canada for good luck. I figured someone might know someone that could help.

Leonard Houston (who has got to have plenty on his mind with the upcoming State of the beaver conference), nevertheless offered to ask a ‘friend’ in the Chicago area. I didn’t think much of it until last night, when I heard that his ‘friend’ was Donald Hey the keynote speaker of the conference and the co-founder of the Wetlands Initiative.

He also is executive director of Wetlands Research, Inc., which manages the Des Plaines River Wetlands Demonstration Project in Lake County, Illinois, one of the nation’s first large-scale wetland restoration projects. He formerly was president of Hey & Associates, an environmental services consulting firm.

So Dr. Hey wrote Len back and said, I be willing to offer that beaver plenty of wetlands and lots of friends if he’s in good health and the caregiver can take care of the paper work! I wrote back the woman excitedly and heard this morning that they are starting the process to get things moving. Imagine, what better life for a beloved beaver than a trip to the nation’s first large-scale wetlands restoration! It’s like sending your daughter to Stanford. I can imagine the tearful goodbye as the foster-mom camps out at the thawing pond to make sure the little orphan is accepted by a colony. Sniff.

They grow up so fast.

In a second burst of good news I heard from the Tri-State Bird Rescue and spoke to Rebecca Dunne Senior Coordinator of the Oiled Animal program. Remember the beaver dam that stopped the fuel-oil spill in South Carolina? She was concerned about the beavers based on what she read and had not been contacted by any local agencies. She said that number 2 fuel oil is so toxic that the fumes make the beavers ‘drunk’ before they even exit the lodge. They have an immediate reaction and are frequently observed acting erratically. (Which is logical, given what a huge neural load their olefactory sense carries – the greatest proportion.) She said she would make a few phone calls to the wildlife agencies involved, but couldn’t jump in without being asked. I said I understood and encouraged her to contact the city who may not have any idea of the risk to these beavers.

I’ll send the info to the reporter and city engineer and see what I can do. Then it’s off to make shortbread beaver cookies for dessert at the fourth annual Worth A Dam Ravioli feast.

One last thing, Eric the beaver is sitting in a Scottish prison with no family this New Years. Why don’t you send him some good cheer?

If your house is as windy as mine is this morning, you might enjoy this.

Beaver dam helps contain oil spill into Greer creek

GREER — A heating oil leak from the basement of the former Allen Bennett Memorial Hospital is expected to have cleanup crews working today to remove the oil from a creek where one resident said a remarkably well-constructed beaver dam stopped much of the spill.

So the leak happened on Friday but no one noticed it until monday of course and the mysteriously named ‘number 2 fuel oil’ was mostly stopped at the beaver dam and didn’t pour into county water sources.

How much oil leaked into a tributary of Frohawk Creek, which feeds the South Tyger River,won’t be known until the contractor tasked with the clean-up finishes and a report is completed,said Thom Berry, spokesman for the state Department of Health and Environmental Control.The city engineer and a coordinator for the Environmental Protection Agency estimated between1,000 to 1,500 gallons had leaked.

The article praises the watertight engineering of the beaver dam and says it saved the town lots of money. I’m always happy when beaver dams get good press but of course I’m concerned about the beavers. There is no indication that the environmental firm hired to take care of the spill has any intention of dealing with them. Obviously the beavers needed to pass through the oil to breath, so theres no way they’re not coated too. I can imagine, with grooming habits, that they have rubbed that toxic sludge all over every part of every family member by now. Temperatures in Greer are dropping below freezing at night and these beavers need their fur in good working order to survive.

I wrote the cast of characters and spoke with Cheryl at IBRRC about it. She said the most knowledgeable voice in oil clean-up out that way is Tri State Bird Rescue. These beavers need to be live trapped, cleaned and re-released. Their dam probably needs to be cleaned too because they’re going to keep touching and working on it. Maybe they need to be relocated because the inside of their lodge is likely covered in oil too. My guess is that the environmental crew will remove the dam and the lodge because its ‘toxic’ and give no thought whatsoever to the first responders who depend on both.

Here’s my letter and where to write your own:

I wanted to write and ask how you plan to care for and monitor the beavers whose dam saved your city a great deal of money and inconvenience. A fuel oil slick on the water surface will obviously affect any animal who lives in it. Aside from its obvious toxicity when it sat on the water they swam in for three days before anyone noticed, the oil could reduce the temperature regulation of their fur and interfere with grooming and care for young. I am cc’ing this email to the International Bird Rescue and Research group so they can advise you how to safely treat coated beavers. You will need to live trap them using baily or hancock traps and I would be happy to advise you who to connect with for that to happen.

The beavers did you a huge favor with their dam. It is only fitting you pay them back.

Heidi Perryman, Ph.D.

President & Founder

Worth A Dam

www.martinezbeavers.org/wordpress