Interview With A Coho Salmon by Ralph Fletcher Q: Uh, excuse me, are you a salmon? A: (puffing with exertion): Yeah. Q: Could I ask you a few questions? A: What are you, some kind of reporter? Q: Sort of. A: Well, okay, but make it quick. I m beat. I m on the final part of my journey, and I ve still got miles to swim before I sleep. Q: So what kind of salmon are you? A: I m a Coho salmon. I live in the Northwest. Q: Tell me about your life. Where did it start? A: It started right here, in this stream, where my mother laid her eggs. I can t remember her I was just a little egg back then but sometimes I pretend I am talking to her. I call her Sal-Mom. Get it? Q: Very funny. So after you hatched, you became a baby salmon? A: Yes. For the first year and a half of my life, I stayed in this stream. First I was an alevin. When I grew a little bigger, I was called fry. When I grew bigger still, I was called a parr or fingerling. I was just a few inches long then. After that I become a smolt. Q: I always wondered: did you have to take swimming lessons when you were little? Is that a stupid question? A: Yes, that is a stupid question. Baby fish don t have to take swimming lessons, silly. It s instinctual. Q: Oh, sorry. What did you eat when you were little? A: When I was an alevin, I lived off the yolk in my egg sac. After that I ate
bugs, insect larvae, spiders, tasty stuff like that. Q: Ugh, disgusting! A: Not to me! Anyway, when I was about eighteen months old, I was ready to do something amazing. See, they call us salmon but they really should call us magicians. We perform magic tricks that no other creatures can do. Q (skeptically): Such as.? A: Until now I had been a fresh water fish, right? But then presto chango! I suddenly turn into a salt-water fish that could swim into the ocean! Salmon are anadromous. Hey, are you writing this down? Q: Uh, sorry, right. Anadromous. How do you spell that? A: A-n-a-d-r-o-m-o-u-s. That means we are born in fresh water, migrate to the ocean, and return to fresh water when we are ready to lay our eggs. Q: Wow. That must feel weird to go from fresh water to salt water, huh? A: Salmon are very adaptable. And that s no fish tale. Q (groaning): So then you swam out to the ocean. A: The Pacific Ocean. C mon, you must have heard of it! I spent five or six years in the Pacific, hanging out with friends. I was in terrific shape I swam over a thousand miles. I really loved the ocean. I had a whale of a good time! Q (getting angry): Enough with the jokes! What did you eat while you were in the ocean? A: The regular stuff: other fish, plankton, clams, the occasional squid. But then it was time for me to come home and lay eggs. And here s where I did my second magic trick. See, before we lay our eggs, salmon always return to the same stream where we were born. So I swam back here to this stream. Q: Wait, I smell something fishy here. Let me get this straight. You leave
your native stream and enter the ocean. You swim for a thousand of miles all over the Pacific, for six years, but you still manage to find your way back to the same stream where you were born? Gimme a break! A (proudly): Go ahead and Google me. It s a fact. Q: But how do you do it? A (smiling): A magician never reveals her secrets! Q (begging): Can t you give me a little hint? A: Actually, nobody really knows for sure. Scientists think it might have to do with smell. Believe it or not, every stream has a particular scent. Some scientists think that maybe we can smell the stream where we were born. My sense of smell is very advanced. That s a nice deodorant you re wearing, by the way. Q: Uh, thanks. By the way, how much do you weigh? A: That s a very personal question! But I ll tell you: twelve pounds. Q: And now you re going upstream to lay your eggs? A: Righto. My other Coho buddies and I are all doing it together. When you have lots of salmon going upstream to spawn, that s called a salmon run. Q: You must be hungry! A: Actually, I ve lost my appetite. I don t know why but hardly eat at all when I m swimming upstream. Weird, huh? Q: What s it like to swim on an empty stomach? A: Swimming upstream against this current for seven hundred miles? It s brutal! Not only that, but I ve got to jump these fish ladders and, at the same time, dodge all kinds of vicious predators. Q (looking around nervously): Predators? What kind of predators? A: Eagles. Hawks. And scarier creatures, too. Why, just around that last bend I got chased by a huge hungry grizzly. I bearly escaped. Swimming
upstream can be unbearable. A nice Coho could get killed around here. Q: Your bad jokes are killing me! But you ve got me thinking. A: What? Q: Salmon are like living boomerangs. You start here, go out into the world, and come back to where you started. A: Living boomerangs. Hey, I like that! I could use that for my obituary. Q (confused): Obituary? What are you talking about? A (quietly): I m going to die soon. Q: Oh no! When? A: As soon as I spawn. I ll lay my eggs in a gravel nest that is called a redd. I deposit somewhere between 2,000 to 4,500 eggs. Hopefully I can find a strong male to fertilize them. Q: Whoa, all those eggs will make a zillion Coho babies! A: No, they won t. Most of them won t survive. I won t survive, either. A few weeks after I lay those eggs, my life will end. Q (sadly): Gee, I m sorry to hear that. A: Don t be. I don t have any tear ducts, but even if I did, I wouldn t shed any tears. After all, I m a Coho salmon, and I ve had a great run.
The Good Old Days by Ralph Fletcher Sometimes I remember the good old days sitting on the kitchen floor with my brothers and sister each on our own square of cool linoleum. I m fresh from the bath, wearing baseball pajamas. Mom gives us each two cookies, a glass of milk, a kiss goodnight. I still can t imagine anything better than that.
Where I m From I m from clothespins, from Chlorox and carbon-tetrachloride, I am from the dirt under the back porch. (Black, glistening, it tasted like beets.) I am from the forsythia bush the Dutch elm whose long-gone limbs I remember as if they were my own. I m from fudge and eyeglasses, from Imogene and Alafair. I m from the know-it-alls and the pass-it-ons, from Perk Up! and Pipe Down! I am from He restoreth my soul with a cottonball lamb and ten verses I can say myself. I m from Artemus and Billie s Branch, fried corn and strong coffee. From the finger my grandfather lost to the auger, the eye my father shut to keep his sight. Under my bed was a dress box spilling old pictures, a sift of lost faces to drift beneath my dreams. I am from those moments snapped before I budded leaf-fall from the family tree. George Ella Lyons