At least four adult bald eagles huddle on the far bank of Sheep Creek. Two more roost on the offshore channel marker. Others hang out in beach side red alders or on the creek delta’s edge. Kept here by the creek’s promise of food they endure each other’s company as the morning’s wet snowfall changes to rain. 

Figuring they need to conserve their energy, Aki and I give them a wide berth, moving to the delta edge where a solitary seal swims past the channel marker. Remembering a claim that seals can be drawn close by singing to them, I start in on, “Dark as a Dungeon.” It’s an odd choice, one I question the first time the seal slips under water. (“Oh come all you young fellers, so young and so fine, and seek not your fortune in a dark dreary mine. It will form as a habit and seep in your soul, till the stream of your blood runs as black as the coal.”).  The seal surfaces for the chorus. (“Where it’s dark as a dungeon and damp as the dew, where the dangers are double, and the pleasures are few, where the rain never falls and the sun never shines, it’s dark as a dungeon way down in the mine.”). Then he disappears for good.

The gulls, apparently unbothered by my singing or Aki’s presence stay for another refrain but I stop when the eagles we left on the stream register noisy complaints.  A dog walker heading right toward them, his herding dog close at his heals, flushes them to flight. Idiot, I think, then decide to give him the benefit of the doubt. He has temporary license plates on the pickup truck he parked next to my car.  He might not know better. It’s easier to tolerate ignorance than rudeness. (Isn’t  there is a song about that?).