Wow what a rainy rainy rainy day yesterday was. The dams were relieved of their wood by 10:00 am and by evening downtown Martinez had received 2.88 inches. The paper talked about what a relief it was that this didn’t happen when we were already saturated. They bemoaned traffic, hillsides, and school children but didn’t once stop to mention beavers!
The flow device is still there, although that was some massive water pressure. Honestly all of Martinez will be lost or destroyed one day and that pipe and cage will still be standing. We checked this morning and the structure of the main dam and neighbor dam was still defined, but most of the wood on top had been washed clean. No beavers in sight, but we don’t always see them right away after a storm. They wait a while to make sure its worth fixing.
If it stays dry today you might try popping by tonight. Sometimes the big rains bring out the grown ups, and it would be nice to see mom and dad at work again.
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On a entirely different note, you might check out the website of our new friend “the skunk whisperer” who has been chatting with Cheryl on twitter. Ned Bruha’s “Total Wildlife Control” relies on humane management in Oklahoma and has been doing some amazing work in that part of the woods. His recent rescue of a skunk with his head in a peanut butter jar made lots of local newscasts this week.
I think his pragmatic “hands-on” advocacy is invaluable in our new political climate where caring about the environment has become a code word for “Bolshevik” (See Green is the new Red!) I thought the Humane Society might enjoy connecting with him and broadening their “crazy-librul-bunny-lover image” by adding a voice from this middle america sportsman to the mix. I wrote John Hadidian (the director of urban wildlife for HSUS) and he said they were aware of him and had connected in the past. I realized how little I understood about Oklahoma’s wildlife attitudes when I read about him and saw A) the woman who stood there protecting the trapped skunk and B) the news media who ran the story and C) all the locals who watched this story. Sometimes people surprise you, (and not in a beaver-killing way).
It’s good to know that there are friends of wildlife in Oaklahoma. Worth A Dam will make sure to refer questions his way, and if he wants help hooking up with the top flow-device minds in the country, we’ll be happy to assisst!
