These adorable silhouettes are the work of our map-creating friend Libby Corliss. We scoured through Cheryl’s photos to find the right images. Libby is helping us get the images to artist Paul Craig who will be making a metal two-dimensional sculpture of mom and kits as a memorial. Originally we were planning to have the artwork adorn the very un-artistic sheetpile wall, but in talking with flood expert Mitch Avalon we learned that there would be more concern of debris getting stuck behind it in high flow. Now Paul is leaning towards the upstream side of the Main Street bridge, which would be visible and water-safe.
Paul is the artist behind the metal sculptures at the Martinez library and has been a great friend of the beavers. Because this is truly a small town, his wife was my PE teacher in 7th grade. Go figure. We have already had some expressed enthusiasm from the council for the project. It’s probably the most visible place for it, and Starbucks is where the public interest in beavers really began. It’s where we picked up mom on her very last day, curled weakly in the weeds and grasses. We’re excited about the project and hopefully we’ll have more to report soon.
I also heard yesterday from the retired supervisor of Sunol Regional Park who knows about several ‘remnant beaver dams’ in and around the area and beyond. Hopefully he will lead us on an expedition to get some samples for carbon testing! This is useful because the current mythology says there were “no historic beavers in Alameda Creek” and so of course you’re completely justified in killing the ones there now. Looking forward to changing that myth. I’ll keep you posted.
