The Eagles don’t belong to us. They fly here, they fly around, and then they fly away. They don’t visit while we boat, and they don’t visit while we swim. They never get to see the green shore and the smallmouth when they crash through the surface feeding on Emerald Shiners. They never see the carp splash in the shallows while they spawn against the rocky shore. They miss the fields turning from green to gold, from gold to tan, from tan to gray. They miss the sweetcorn sending out their tassels, and they miss the harvest. The planting, missed, too.
The Eagles come with the cold, riding down from the north, from those lakes where they fish and those rivers that they watch. They fly in on the cold currents and they circle overhead for most of a season. They circle my office, they circle your house, they circle the water and they wait. They’re cold and they’re ruthless and it’s minus ten this morning and they don’t even care. They’re waiting for the ice and they’re hoping it hurries. They don’t want to stay here for long, though if they were more discerning they’d wait to see what the piers look like and what the boats do and how the sun rises and sets on a summer day.
But they won’t be here and they don’t care, because they’re here to eat and they’re not our friends. The Coots visit now, too, and like so many arctic birds that stop here for a spell, they stay longer than they probably should. We can’t blame them, these small running-on-water-birds, because they stay longer when they like a place. Just like us. And so the Coots stay and the lake freezes and the Coots huddle into tighter and tighter circles. It’s when they huddle and the Eagles know the timing is right, that they’ve finally found what they’ve been waiting for. That the ice has formed and the Coots have huddled and the air is cold and the piers are stacked, each on their lawn, waiting.
The Eagles see the birds and they see the ice and they know it’s time, and so they circle overhead and they dive down like fighter pilots on a strafing run and they eat and they eat. They rip the Coots from the water, one by one, plucking them off like me milling around the waiter with the chilled shrimp tray at a party where no one feels comfortable enough to eat too many. No one but me, and the Eagles. They grab a small arctic bird and fly to the nearest Oak, or Walnut, or Maple, and they rip it to pieces in a hurry. Then, once the feathers and the bones have fallen to the ground the Eagle goes again, circling and circling before diving. The feast will last as long as the Coots huddle in whatever open spot of water might be left.
It’s that time again, and the Eagles are here. The Coots came first, but the Eagles will be the last to leave. And then it’ll just be us, the sturdy ones who don’t mind the winter, the ones who know that after winter we’ll get to put our piers back in and then everything will be alright.