An End, A Beginning The Inevitable Death Of A Single Kokanee Serves A Higher Purpose In Nature.

`Death becomes you,” the eagle said. The kokanee had no time to respond.

Hooked talons on a single foot had impaled the prey from four directions at once. The second foot merely secured the takeout meal for the flight to a nearby tree.

Below every successful bald eagle is a rotting fish.

The predator’s observation, however, is well-taken. Death is becoming to a kokanee. The carcass of this landlocked sockeye salmon is somehow less distasteful than the mangled remains of road kill.

The kokanee’s demise seems to have a higher purpose.

For several years, this particular fish had avoided the jaws of chinook salmon, anglers’ hooks and the diving assaults of osprey as it roamed Lake Coeur d’Alene feeding on zooplankton and aquatic insect larvae.

Maturity came as suddenly and irreversibly as ripeness to a wild fruit. Silver sides ripened to red. A hump formed in its back. Its snout stretched and teeth grew like corn.

With a little luck, the kokanee had a chance to pair up and leave its urges in shoreline gravel, where the fry will hatch to please another eagle in three or four years.

The death of a salmon is not a conclusion.

Mink, raccoons and otters feast on salmon carcasses. Ravens and magpies pluck at the leftovers. Tree roots drink in the nutrients from the scattered decaying matter. Rodents gnaw the bones.

This is the kokanee’s lot in life.

Most of the bald eagles would have no use for Lake Coeur d’Alene if it weren’t for the kokanee. Eagles aren’t impressed by scenery.

Twenty years ago, more than 500 eagles crammed into a short stretch of McDonald Creek on Glacier National Park to feast on kokanee. When that run lost its legs to downstream factors, the eagles stopped returning, too.

Nostalgia is lost on an empty stomach.

Because of winter, bears den, wrens migrate and frogs burrow into the bottom of ponds.

The eagle is here for the fuel that wards off the cold. When the kokanee spawn winds down or ice seals them out of reach, the eagle moves on.

The rest of us shiver.