You’d be surprised how not-thrilled many many people were with my killjoy response to yesterdays trapping news. People that you would expect to know better but who sadly had their heads turned by the alluring headline. Of course I wrote all the reporters and sent them the information showing the numbers of beavers killed by depredation versus trapping every year. Not a sole wrote me back.
Go figure. Sometimes people just want something to be a victory and won’t stop celebrating long enough to look at the facts. I get it.
Good news came later in the day from author Ben Goldfarb who was sent another very appreciative letter by a new reader of his fantastic book. The letter writer was also a biology instructor who sent a photo of a valued treasure.
Its from a series of plates celebrating various national parks. The Yosemite plate shows two beavers in the Merced River with Half Dome in the background! I am biology faculty at Cal State Stanislaus where one of my colleague’s heroes is Joseph Grinnell- I had to tell him about Grinnell’s beaver miscalculation. Great book.
Got that? Not only is this an enormously cool bowl from the national parks plates, but this professor LOVED telling his colleague about Grinnell’s error that our research demonstrated.
Ben’s excellent writing has tiptoed into so many important minds!
Yesterday there was a delivery at the door with a very very sealed box from China of 100 magnifying glasses! Assuming this all works I think they’ll be very popular next year.
The idea of course is that kids put together animal footprint cards with their correct species to identify the suspects, and then come to me when the “Case of the missing salmon” is solved to get their very own.
