Cheryl got a call a Tuesday about Sonoma Wildlife receiving a beaver that had been huddled in someone’s back yard for a couple days. She drove up to see it yesterday with some beaver treats and background because this is the first beaver they’ve ever had. 31 lbs, which really seems disperser size for our beavers, but its not really the right time of year to be without a home. A physical yesterday revealed it’s a male with bite and scratch wounds on his back. He’s going into surgery today. Cheryl has been invited to help with the release when he’s on his feet again. If you want to assist with his care and remind them that it’s a good idea to rescue beavers, please donate here. I did, and you should too. Rest assured that all our beavers are on sight and no one is missing. Plus when you watch this video you will be certain it’s not ours.
From a very young age, Martinez beavers know how to hold on to an apple.
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Liz Wickard talks with children and their parents about beavers during a Nature at Night hike Sept. 20 at the Morrison Nature Center in Aurora. The Nature at Night series is a free environmental education series held once a month. (Seth McConnell, YourHub)
Aurora nature program explores animals, insects
Kaleb Cano, 10, raised his hand straight in the air when the instructor asked for a volunteer to demonstrate what it’s like to be a beaver. He jumped up, stood in front of the room and beamed with his arms outstretched. Liz Wickard, a naturalist at the Morrison Nature Center in Aurora, plopped a thick, brown pelt over Cano.
“This heavy fur keeps him warm. It’s like the underwear coat,” Wickard said to a room full of giggling children on Sept. 20. “But beavers have two kinds of fur, and this fur on the outside is made of coarse, oily guard hairs.”
Well, technically the hair isn’t naturally oily. It’s painstakingly treated by the beaver every day. And really, if you wanna teach what its like to be a beaver you should let people lie about you and pollute your home and blame you for everything before shooting at you in the dark. Then have the children crawl through some body crushing traps and see how many get away.
Have I grown too cynical for this work?
“About two years ago, this dam was about 15 feet tall and 30 feet wide,” Wickard said to the group once they were outside, along the muddy banks. “But it washed out during heavy rain one summer, and no one repaired it.”
Gosh an educational beaver dam that’s suddenly untended for no reason whatsoever. Call me jaded, but I just had to go looking to see what happened to the beavers on Sand Creek two years ago.
These endearments are directed not at me, but at the beaver, which must endure a few more minutes of this alarming final stage of their 200-mile journey to a new home. Tippie trapped this family in a desolate stretch of Sand Creek in Aurora a couple of days ago and has been chatting with them regularly ever since.
This is from the Westword article on Sherri Tippie in 2011. So somebody paid for these animals to be trapped and relocated, which is marginally better than being killed but still an easy answer to the mystery of why the dam’s not maintained. Maybe the Morrison Center itself paid for them to be trapped? Or it was the nearby golf course or Sheriff’s office or some combination. At any rate the story of their removal ran in the most famous 5 page article about beavers in the history of the Colorado Area, so I’m going to expect them to know dam well why the dam isn’t maintained. And be straight about the dangers beavers face.
And, for goodness sake, stop dressing children up in coats and flippers and use your grant money to explain to children and parents that beavers build a neighborhood and this is why they are WORTH A DAM.
