I am officially a week away from driving to Oregon for the State of the Beaver conference. I am starting to get nervous. Last week I heard from Suzanne Fouty that she won’t be attending due to another conference, and Sherri Tippie called yesterday to confer that she won’t be there either because of knee surgery. I’m very, very disappointed because listening to Sherri last time was my most inspiring moment at the conference. The moment where I felt beavers were absolutely in good hands whether I helped any or not. What will inspire me this year?
Two people that are still on the agenda that I am looking forward to meeting are John Hadidian of HSUS and Jimmy Taylor of APHIS. Kind of an unlikely combination but I’m sure if you could get those too laughing and drunk in a corner you could change the world. Well, I’ll give it my best shot. I’ll get to hear Mary O’brien, Jeff Baldwin and Eli Asarian. Worth A Dam is paying travel expenses for Michael Pollock to be there. And of course our good friends Paul and Louise Ramsay who are zipping out all the way from Scotland.
Yesterday I talked to Mike Callahan of Beaver Solutions just to make sure that I could give the ‘we-want-to-save-beavers’ his contact info so they could chat about how they might install a flow device here. I’m hopeful that they might be able to work something out because Mike is traveling back to California for a beaver management workshop in Douglas City and he’s planning a visit to see our beavers on the way! (If they finally agree to show themselves, that is!)
A big thank you to Shell who just sent a $900.00 check for last year’s festival, and to Kiwanis who just encouraged us to reapply again for this year! I thought it’s a good morning for some appreciate for our old beaver friend Glenn Hori who has been keeping an eye on some river otters at Heather Farms. He photographed four yesterday, which is pretty amazing.
Although not as amazing as this photograph from 2007 by Sean Merrigan and recently posted on facebook by our otter friends. Yes, that’s a sea otter floating toward the golden gate.
