Last night’s talk in Marin was a rainy, positive, beaver booster shot for everyone involved, including me. The classroom was full of hardy bird watchers who made the trek to Richardson bay despite the weather and the traffic near the golden gate. Jon did a lovely job setting FRO’s remarkable children’s banner across the wall, and we let folks take newsletters and festival announcements as they entered. Then I proceeded to give an hour+ talk about the journey Martinez had taken with the beavers.
This was an enormously appreciative audience, that laughed in all the right places, appreciated the news and film clips, loved the images and video, and really enjoyed the civics lesson we had learned in living with beavers. Afterwards there were wonderful questions and unanimous positive feedback. One woman asked what had been the hardest part for me personally because I seemed like such a natural advocate. (Ha!) Another brought me a copy of Alice Waters chapter on beavers, and a third asked me if I knew they had a special grooming claw. The room couldn’t have been more varied or diverse. There was even a man who had trapped beaver in attendance, who described how their tails were good eating. A man brought up the beaver reintroduction campaign and wondered what I thought about it, prompting the woman who invited me to tell the group that Marin Audubon wasn’t supportive of the reintroduction plan posed recently. Which came as an obvious surprise to everyone there after my talk to hear such a thing!
But my favorite comment of the night came from one very interesting fellow, who said that there already HAD BEEN a beaver in Marin at the pond near Smith Ranch road, probably about 20 years ago. This made total sense to me, because you could see how they would come up Galinas creek after crossing the San Pablo bay from the Carquinez Strait. That beaver had eventually died or been gotten rid of but it confirmed my theory that whether they’re introduced or not, these plucky animals are going to get there on their own. It gave me the opportunity to repeat my new favorite metaphor: that any city ‘deciding’ whether they wanted beavers or not, was akin to any parents ‘deciding’ whether they wanted their teenagers to become sexually active.
It was going to happen on its own, whether they wanted it or not.
