“Never do things others can do and will do if there are things others cannot do or will not do” Amelia Earhart
-Still not feeling well. No ICEV ATLO classes or CBB class today.
-Finished “Eager” by Ben Goldfarb
-Wrote and sent off book report for “Eager”
-Started reading Earning Freedom!
-Sent off journal entries
-Asked husband to find my diplomas for PPT and my Release Plan
-Saved digital copy of beaver notes from Eager, to go paperless (see below). -Someone donated a bunch of puzzles and games for each IP dorm! Picked out a puzzle (Sunflowers by Van Gogh) with a few people to give myself a much needed brain break. I haven’t released enough endorphins all week, so it was great. Can’t wait to do puzzles with my husband and family one day.
-Finished an art project
-Listened to Podcasts:
The Best Way To Lower The Earth’s Temperature Fast, TED
The Climate Movement Needs New Stories, TED
The Benefits Of Laughter, Joel Osteen
How Music Helped Me Love Through Long COVID, TED (Loved this!) #2164 Neil Pasricha, Quote Of The Day Show
#2166 “I’d You Want Things On The Higher Shelf, You’ve Got To Stand On The Books You Read”, QOD
Get Up So God Can Get You Out, Joel Osteen
MY NOTES FROM “EAGER” BY BEN GOLDFARB:
-Kits stay w/parents for two yrs and leave when their new litter of siblings arrive. -Some dens/families in Canada: kits stayed over two yrs to help care for siblings. -Warn intruders by milking castoreum and urine onto mud mounds.
-Don’t hibernate.
-Diet: Inner bark (Cambium: “sugary tissue layer”). Eat like corn on the cob. -Summer: Green plants (ferns, poison ivy, etc). Winter: Woodier diet, stems and bark. -Favorites: Aspen, Willow, Cottonwood, but eat almost any woody plants. -Caecotrophy: eating pudding-like feces. Digested twice, feces is like sawdust. -Unusually long intestines.
-Tail: net of blood vessels: Thermoregulation, kickstand for balance, rudder, fat reserves, warn danger by slapping water.
-Teeth: Iron. Inside is softer and wears down quicker. “Beveled, chisel-like edge.” Dense enamel, orange from iron and tooth decay resistant. Endless growth=hazard when tooth becomes loose, preventing filing down. Leads to starvation or impaled brains.
-126k hairs on a stamp sized patch. Thick, buoyant, dry suit like. Acts as armor, life preserver. Guard fur on top w/soft underfur.
-Glandular Secretions. Delineate territory w/castor sacs: internal pouches make “musty, vanilla tinged oil.”
-Not the greatest eyesight. Great sense of smell.
-Pear-shaped bodies.
-Dens and lodges the size of a living room. ~260′ wide and 6′ high.
-Dams and lodges change entire ecosystems. Willow stems rerooted after depositing on a bank. Can create “profound change.”
-Plaster lodges and dens w/mud freezes like cement in winter.
-Damming instincts: capture-raised heard stream trickle on loudspeaker and they dammed the concrete floor of the research room.
-Live in swampy areas, which they make. Flood areas of land.
-Others species rely on them. Dawns, frogs, butterflies, fish, muskrats, herons etc. -Beaver dams are good for underground storage.
-Capable of depositing 22 million cubic meters of sediment= 21 empire state buildings!
-Often killed by unhappy residents. Viewed as pests. Relocating stories like the parachuting beavers.
-“Beaver Deceivers” and Beaver Den Analogues.
-Predators: bear, coyote, cougar, wolf…
-Native folklore. Natives resisted involvement in the fur trade.
Terms Learned:
-Cultural Carrying Capacity: # of a species that humans can tolerate.
-Biological Carrying Capacity: # of animals a given habitat can sustain.
-Gaining Streams: streams that gain water from ground more than they contribute to it. -Castor Canadensis (beaver)
-Two ways we respond to climate change: adaptation and mitigation.
-Solastalgia: the dissonance of chance, the rapidity of loss, the disorientation brought on by environmental grief. The homesickness you have when you’re still at home. Inflicts deep psychic wounds of people.
