So the birthday bash was fun yesterday, and this is what I couldn’t show. A few months ago I was alerted to the art of Joan White in Wisconsin by a reader from Pennsylvania who had commissioned a piece. I talked with Joan and sent her some of Cheryl’s awesome photos. And this is what she produced. It is painted on a slab of cedar that was taken down by a beaver near her home. The photo does not do it justice. In person it;s so luminous that it looks like the beaver is going to come right out of the water into our living room. Up in the corner on the left are two tiny and beautifully detailed frogs and a snail, with some lovely sparrows and fish at the bottom. At the bottom it is signed with the title we chose, “Amik”.
In addition to being an amazing artist, she is also a visionary. She looks at the wood and literally sees the animal images that are reaching to climb out of it. There’s a graphic on her webpage that previews the wood and then the amazing paintings she creates from each individual peice, You have to go look. Honestly, when I was a teen I saw a display of unfinished marbled carvings of DaVinci and it was very similar, beautiful images stuggling to come to life and leap from their humble beginnings.
Of course I had in the back of my mind that I might one day ask ev entually for a donation to the silent auction if everything worked out. But in explaining the beaver I told her about our work and she offered before we could ask. She is very fond of beavers and thrilled to meet someone who protects them. So she has that going for her too.
We think all the walls in the house are jealous now because they didn’t get one too. We might need to see what we can do about that.
Meanwhile, here’s a fun reminder from the New York Times that of the famous bronx beaver and the the nature that we displaced all around us that is ready to come back.
With more residents than Dallas, more than Atlanta and San Francisco combined, the Bronx is a vast, vibrant megalopolis, which also happens to be New York City’s greenest borough. It’s home to the largest urban zoological garden in America, a park system nearly 10 times the size of Manhattan’s Central Park — and the city’s last remaining patch of old growth forest.
Colleagues of mine have found American Eels also returning to the river. The Bronx River is proof that given half a chance, nature finds a way back. You know the story of José.
No. Who is José?
Oh, well.
Back in 2007 I was in my office at the zoo one afternoon when some colleagues came by and said that on their lunch break, walking along the Bronx River, they saw a beaver. I said, “No, guys, you didn’t see a beaver, you saw a muskrat. There haven’t been beavers on the Bronx River for 200 years.”
They were, like, “We know what a beaver is, Eric.”
So the next day, I go with them to look, and sure enough, there were markings on a tree that were not made by a muskrat. They resembled the carvings of beaver teeth. A few days later a photographer got pictures of the beaver. Nobody knew what sex it was — probably a male because males disperse a lot farther. It was named after José E. Serrano, the United States Congressman from the Bronx who directed federal money to help clean up the river.
Everybody had thought the closest beaver population was up in northern Westchester or Putnam County, which meant that José must have traveled all the way downriver, through Scarsdale, through Bronxville, through these really lovely, ritzy neighborhoods in Westchester — and decided to live in the Bronx!
In the Bronx Zoo!
The beaver built a couple of lodges and knocked down a couple of big trees.
José knocked trees down?
Well, the wind did, with an assist from the beaver. At the zoo everybody was like, OK, all right, that’s what beavers do.
But the Botanical Garden was less happy about the whole situation. They put some metal guards around some of the trees. Then a few years ago another beaver showed up. So, now there were two of them. The Bronx River Alliance had the idea to ask schoolchildren in the neighborhood what they should call the new beaver. And the kids decided on Justin. Justin Beaver.
So now José and Justin live in the Bronx? I haven’t seen either one of them in a while.
Hmm. Eric, do you think maybe they’ve moved back to the suburbs? Yes. Maybe.
If you were reading this website back in 2008 (And why wouldn’t you be) you’d know all about Jose, and the Manhatta project, and the grounds keeper at the park that was keeping an eye on him. And you’d be able to explain to the fricken New York Times that beavers don’t KNOCK down trees for god’s sake.
They chop them.
It’s always a fun time of year when auction items start arriving in the mail but this was exception. The very talented Joan White of Nicolet Studio in Wisconsin has donated an original beaver painting on a slice of cherry wood. It’s a large piece valued at 1200 dollars. It was inspired by actual beavers that built a dam in a stream near her home in the woods, and were subsequently killed by an intolerant neighbor for “Just being beavers.”
