“Come and get it!” Ma Kettle

It was a morning to remember. No wind. A sunrise climbing through the pines with elegant purpose, like royalty entering the court of a new day.  I was in a canoe creating my own mirror image.  And all too quickly I had a nice walleye and a good eater pike on the fish stringer. The pair was easily enough for a feast of fish for supper.

Then I spotted the floating corpse.

I paddled closer. It was a walleye, larger than the one on my stringer. Its snow-white belly shone like a beacon.

I leaned over and hefted it out of the water to assess its freshness. Rigor mortis was setting in so I slipped it back into the water. I nodded a “lucky you” to the lone herring gull standing at attention on a rocky outcropping in the lake.

By the time I paddled the hundred yards back to our campsite, Nancy was up. She was pleased that my visit to the fish market had been successful. 

While we settled on the rocks with our morning coffee and breakfast, the belly-up fish drifted closer in the day’s first breeze.  

By now an adult bald eagle had been attracted to the possible fish meal. It perched high in a white pine a couple of hundred yards from us. Neither the gull nor the eagle seemed willing to take the initiative to claim the fish.

Transfixed by the promise of drama, we stayed still and quiet. 

Suddenly the gull launched into the air. It passed over the fish, flying a hundred yards beyond the prize before it banked and returned to its rock.

The scavenging skills of both the eagle and the gull far surpass their hunting skills. Minutes passed with no action. What were they waiting for?

I glanced over at the fish, now floating only ten yards off our shore. A shadow appeared beneath the carcass and a snapping turtle eased into view.

I marveled at how this ancient reptile had honed in on the prize by sniffing fish-tainted molecules of fresh death. How far away could it pick up the bouquet of demise?

I edged closer to the water for a better view of the turtle. Obviously I was not discreet enough because the water swirled as the turtle hurried to the depths.

I returned uphill to settle with my cup of coffee and wait. And wait. None of the scavengers were willing to make the move towards the fish.

Nancy and I puzzled over the inaction. We sat for two hours watching and waiting for a move on the floating walleye. How could any scavenger show such restraint? I would think that most wildlife feel a constant gnaw of hunger and with such an easy offering why not seize the moment?

Finally, with the sun almost overhead, the eagle swooped in, extended its talons and grabbed the fish. It labored slightly as it flew with its prize and landed a couple hundred yards away on a point of bare bedrock. 

The gull seemed nonplussed. And no sign of the turtle. 

Turns out that the turtle, unseen to us, was already moving stealthily towards my stringer of fish that I had clasped to a shaded shoreline bush. In late afternoon, I walked down to fillet the pair of fish for our supper. It was then that I discovered that we had a walleye and a half of a pike.

Was it a turtle’s revenge? Or simply a public fish market open to anyone?

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