The Way of an Eagle

I am 17 years old, riding on the interior engine cover of a 28-foot motorhome, strategically situated between my father, the driver, and my mother, the passenger. We are on a summer vacation driving through Canada and Alaska and we have left our campsite beside a huge lake. All morning we had been watching Bald Eagles fishing for salmon.

Proverbs 30:18-19 list at the top of things that awe and amaze “the way of an eagle in the sky.” It was fascinating and mysterious how these birds could come shooting down from their piney treetops at speeds of 40 miles per hour to glide over the surface of the lake and then reach forward with their talons and snatch a fish. The fish would wriggle for all it was worth in protest of its alien abduction. The eagles knew to aim their catch aerodynamically in the direction they were flying and would return to their treetops to enjoy their sushi with no other utensils than their beak and claws.

But envision if you will that we have left the lake and are making our ascent up a gravel road that winds along the mountainside. The lake is miles below us to the right and my mother is whimpering about there being no guard rail along her side of the roadway. My father is concentrating on not pulling up too close to the cloud of dust being kicked up by a small, white pickup truck about five car-lengths ahead of us. I notice there is a large, young eagle atop a lightning-blasted tree up on the hillside to our left. I know he’s young because his plumage hasn’t changed from all brown to the distinctive dark body with white head plumage. This eagle is picking at the remains of a fairly large fish and as the white pickup truck approaches, the noise and dust cloud disturb the bird and he decides to take the rest of his lunch somewhere else.

The eagle takes off but his fish is not the nice, tight package it had been when he had flown up here this far from the lake. The bird of prey barely gets a couple of wing flaps in before he starts to tilt and dip while his claws juggle and snatch and grab at the meaty mess of his half-eaten salmon. The eagle tries vainly to gain altitude but the salmon slips from his grasp. The eagle practically snaps his talons in frustration then dives down towards the lake for something new to eat.

Meanwhile the fish is falling, flopping, spinning in the air. My parents and I have a perfect view of it as gravity brings it down. The fish carcass lands directly on the windshield of the white pickup and explodes across it in a spray of blood and guts worthy of a Peckinpah film. The remaining spinal column of the fish bounces off and sails over the side of the road.

The truck screeches to a halt and out of the driver’s side tumbles a young man in his early twenties dressed like someone from a construction site job. He is wide-eyed, frenzied, running around to the front of his truck to take in the scope of the blood smear, looking at the front grill, looking under the truck for a body. Nothing. He runs around to the back, looks under, looks around, looks up at the sky.

We slow down and pull to a stop behind his truck and he runs over to my mother’s window and bellows, “What was it? WHAT WAS IT?”

My mother points to the sky and shouts, “An eagle! An eagle!”

The young man claps his hand to his forehead and exclaims with relief, “Thank God! I thought it was a fish!”