New Baby Beaver Born On Alhambra Creek
By Greta Mart
Staff Reporter
Tuesday July 03, 2012
Staff Reporter
Tuesday July 03, 2012
Local wildlife lovers are celebrating this week, heralding the arrival of a new addition to the Alhambra Creek beaver family.
A kit, estimated to be roughly six weeks old, was spotted by members of advocacy group Worth-A-Dam over the weekend, and founder Heidi Perryman said in a phone interview Monday that the youngster is now counted as the fifth current member of Martinez's Castor canadensis denizens.
Perryman said she first learned of a rumored beaver baby about a month ago, when an elementary school teacher from Pleasant Hill emailed her with news of a spotting from the Escobar Street bridge in early June. Since then, Worth-A-Dam members and supporters have been monitoring the downtown stretch of Alhambra Creek, hoping to catch sight of the elusive tot.
"First we saw the adults bringing in treats (into a newly-fashioned den, upstream from the Escobar Bridge)," said Perryman. "Then we saw Dad bringing in fennel ... fennel stimulates lactation so we wondered if there was a nursing mom in there."
It's been five years since a family of beavers set up housekeeping in the downtown waterway, sparking a civic uproar over a City Council plan to exterminate the aquatic rodents.
The original matriarch of the family died in 2010, after giving birth to 15 kits. Three of those kits have successfully reached near-adulthood, and in 2011, the patriarch left the creek for about four months. He returned with a suspected new mate, said Perryman, and she believes the newcomer has added another baby to the bunch.
On Sunday night, Perryman, her husband and another Worth-A-Dam member caught sight of the kit three times, and witnessed it attempt to give a forceful tail-slap, a beaverish sign of danger.
"He was clearly trying to be a beaver," said Perryman. The tail slap "took his whole body, he sort of fell into it."
Worth-A-Dam is hosting its fifth annual Beaver Festival on Aug. 4, and Perryman said "it's a great year to celebrate our beaver family."
Source:
New Baby Beaver Born On Alhambra Creek
http://www.martinezgazette.com
