A Fish, An Osprey and A Human
— Together by The Hand of Time, The Wheel of Karma
For several years now I’ve observed online an osprey nest on Hog Island in Maine. It is featured by the National Audobon Society and there is 24/7 livestream video depicting the life of ospreys and their surrounding nature.
So it’s Sunday and I’m on my computer observing Steve, the longtime osprey occupant of the Hog Island nest. After a few days of osprey speed dating where several females were vying for Steve’s affections, the past few days he’s been doing all sorts of things to woo a particularly new female he selected to join him for breeding at his nest.
Sadly, his partner from last year, Phoebe, didn’t return from her migration.
Steve & His New Lady
Before I began my watch setting, I placed some fish filets and French fries into my toaster oven, figuring it was finally time for me to eat something. When I began my cooking, the osprey nest on my computer screen was empty. Returning, I noticed Steve had appeared alone with a fish.
Clearly, he intended the fish for his new mate. You see, that’s what ospreys do. By no means does he impress her by bringing her to a high-priced classy osprey restaurant. This is simply a matter of: You get to eat a fish in my nest!
But there’s a hitch. His new mate didn’t follow him into the nest to get her fish. She could be heard chirping a short distance away. So abandoning his fish gift in the middle of the nest, he flew off to get her.
Meanwhile, the now struggling fish, still alive and facing slings and arrows of outrageous misfortune, went through the experience of intermittent flapping while trying to escape from the confines of the nest.
I’m sittin’, thinking: “Poor fish!”
Steve’s mate finally arrives to the nest but she’s loudly chirping away. Her chirping is so incessant, she never notices her fish. Instead she madly chirps away, concerned with calling Steve also into the nest. She never sensed Steve had left her a fish.
But Steve remained a no-show. Without ever noticing her fish, she flew off to find him. Meanwhile, the still live fish continued its final gasping flaps in the nest.
At this point the bell to my toaster oven rings to signal my own fish is ready. I put the video on pause and prepare my own fish dinner, this while caught in hard wonder about the prospect of eating my fish what with the fate of the poor fish in the osprey nest.
Anyway, I get back to my computer and click play to the livestream video. Immediately, I find myself watching the flapping fish, it wanting water so much but stuck in the depths of an osprey nest.
And I am a fated human to observe it all.
I thought: “This fish wants to live!”
Why does life have to be like this?
But now the whole scene became coupled to my own dead, now cooked, fish sitting on my plate, waiting for me to devour during a time of my own hunger need.
Reluctantly, while entertaining the deeper questions and meaning of life, I continued watching the computer screen, while eating my fish and chips. By the time I finished eating, I realized the trapped fish in the nest was done also. It no longer moved.
I realized cycles of life — Steve’s fish and my own— had passed; one consumed, the other awaiting consumption.
How It Ended?
Steve eventually flew back to the empty nest, grasped the fish with his talons and then flew off to meet his mate in mid air over the bay. Where they went and who got to eat that fated fish? I know not.
Below, is a similar story about consumption in life. It’s a song I wrote called: The Origin of The Silver Surfer:
