At long last, salmon

Monday night

When we were looking for houses in the papers and online six years ago we almost missed it. Julie had already been through the paper and I picked it up to see what she’d circled. At the top of the page something caught my eye which she’d missed, “…two creeks…”

We were looking for something downtown, not in Tukwila or someplace but I read it just to see what we’d be missing. It said it was in Seattle and priced just on the outer rim of our range. Nonsense. Circled it anyway.

Sure enough, it was ten minutes from downtown and close, but not too close, to a big shopping center. Two protected creeks right around the yard joining at the corner on a few acres of undeveloped park. If you read here much you already known, this is the yard.

The birds, the trout, the other assorted animals and insects make me happy to live here every single day. Never is there a day when I don’t appreciate it and rarely a day when I don’t see something interesting or even novel; whether it’s just the same 20 species of birds (from herons to hawks, and woodpeckers to wrens) that appear any given day or a raccoon mother teaching her three kits to catch crayfish by feeling around under the bigger rocks.

I’ve seen trout spawing in a ditch under a driveway, hawks eating flickers and robins and snakes, woodpeckers by the bushel, hummingbirds fledge, raccoons fighting like pscyhotic cats, herons swallow suckerfish whole which I could barely finish cooked and cut up. But in the six years before today I never saw a salmon in my backyard. Today I got to see at least three Coho salmon headed up the creek to spawn. One was at least 30" long.

I know the creeks in Seattle still have a lot of problems and it might get worse but to have a three foot long salmon jumping like a wild Alaska documentary in plain view from my computer desk entirely within the Seattle city limits made me really happy and proud of what this place has been able to maintain and what some Seattlites are trying to restore. I grumble and bitch a lot about picking up after people around the creeks but today it certainly seemed worth it.

Now, if I can just get an eagle on camera working on one of the carcasses next week after they’ve spawned a floated back down here.

Here’s a local link: Be a Creek Steward. If you are in an urban setting with any nature left at all, check out your local programs. You can make a difference and help to keep an environment that’s as pleasant to live in for humans as it is for the rest of the pyramid.