Monday, October 11, 2010

Chapter 51-Crepuscular development, Hostages and the Suicide Honeymoon

I had a fitful sleep last night. Partly it was because I was worried about what I’ll do to support my family two weeks from now. Partly it was due to too much caffeine intake. But mostly my sleep was disturbed by the incessant squeaking and chattering of some otters below my window.  I stuck my head out the attic window and did the classic, “Hey! Shut up down there!” I even poured a bottle of fresh urine down at them, but they just kept on yipping away, all night.
As I wavered in and out of consciousness I became aware of a mother bear and cub swimming over to the lodge, coming into the guide shack, climbing the ladder up into the attic and just sitting beside my bed, observing me. There I lay, helpless and plump, jammed full of roast pork loin and pecan pie. I was going to turn over and shoo them out, but I couldn’t manage to wake myself up. So I just laid there sleeping and waited for them to eat me. When I finally awoke, they were gone, not even leaving any footprints, which was mighty genteel of them.
Bears are crepuscular after all. (Which is, if nothing else, a helluva swell word.) It means, more active at dawn and dusk, but should not be confused with the strictly nocturnal or diurnal, matutinal or vespertine. As a matter of fact, bears just seem to be active all the time, especially at this time of year, when they go into hyper-phagia, which basically means, they are super hungry all the time, and if there is food, they eat, and eat, and keep eating.
Eagles don’t over eat. They can’t, they wouldn’t be able to fly. All they can do is eat enough to power themselves through the day. That’s why native Indians call a fellow lying Indian ‘Walking Eagle’. He’s so full of shit that he can’t fly. But I digress.
The bears compulsive gluttony reminds me of the morbidly obese obsessing over their plans to go on an all you can eat buffet cruise. It really doesn’t matter where the cruise goes, just so long as that buffet is on board. For it is not enough for a bear to just eat enough. There is no such thing as enough, they need to store up enough fat to last through five or six months of sleep, and if they are nursing cubs, they will be haemorrhaging fat stores to feed those thirsty furballs.  Hence the round the clock search for food.
Of course, all this gluttony is a preparation for five months of hibernation, which is a good excuse indeed. I’ve lately discovered the connection between the word ‘Bear’ and ‘Burial’.  Somewhere in our forefather’s hazy caveman days, the dead were placed in the earth to regenerate and come back to life, just like bears. Perhaps the ancient human remains found with bear bones clutched in their hands and covered with bear skins were emulating the bear’s ability to go into the earth and sleep like the dead, arising with the spring, to new life, resurrection.
Lately it has struck me that I am kind of like a happy prison guard escorting hostages around. People who come here are generally of the ‘package tour’ variety and they have purchased a package. So, they don orange jackets and jumpsuits, just like prisoners and I escort them around with my bear spray and very large knife and policeman style walkie talkie.
Yesterday, I dropped a huge cinder block by the bus, for the elderly to use as a step. I dropped it iinto the mud and a geyser of muck splooshed up into my face. Comedy.
When we get to the spawning channel, I carefully release them from the bus, and usher them up a cattle ramp into a cage on stilts from which they cannot escape. Hahaha! Hostages, we won’t release you till you pay your bar tab and leave a tip!
Also, I think that the epic journey that salmon make would be a very compelling premise for a movie, hell, Finding Nemo was a smash hit, this would be even better! And its true!  Think about it, the movie begins with a wordless epic journey of the hero’s parents swimming upstream and spawning and dying, all set to some heroic music, perhaps Beethoven. Then the tiny boy fry and girl fry are hatched out of neighbouring egg nests and they become friends and swear to return to spawn when they grow up.
The movie could follow their trials and tribulations against enormous odds. As fry, they are preyed on by larger fish, herons and ducks. When they swim out to sea, they must pass through the gauntlet of predators and past the fish farms, where they are drawn in by the eerie lights to be devoured by crazed caged cannibal salmon. Then there’s the onslaught of sea lice that hover around the salmon farms, like millions of tiny vampires, sucking the tiny fish dry.
Then those who finally make it out to sea, must face the perils of dolphins, seals, drag nets and pollution, before finally beginning the journey back to spawn. Actually, this doesn’t sound like much of a Disney comedy does it? But somehow, against all odds, the two little lovers finally make it back to their home stream, past the claws of bears and eagles, lures of fishermen and all. Their happy ending is that they are reunited in laying the seeds for the next generation before their ragged, half rotten bodies give up the ghost and wash downstream to be devoured by various scavengers. Yeah, maybe if Elton John did the sound track and Eddy Murphy and Lady Gaga did the voices. Hmmm.
Anyhoo, the season is almost done; I’m flying out this morning for my final days off. Then one more shift and it’s upwards and onwards to the fabulous unknown.

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