With powerful strokes of its wings this young Bald Eagle flies barely a wingspan over the cobalt blue water of the Firehole river. Its wings make a strong whooshing sound as the wind rushes through its primary feathers as they complete their cycle. Its flight is close enough to the water that the deep blue color is reflected off the nearly white feathers on its head and tail.

This is a young bird, less than five years old, as it takes that long for its distinctive head and tail feathers to turn completely white. Since the sexes are similar it’s difficult to determine whether it is a male or female. When the males are together with the females, the female is approximately 25% larger, which has earned them the name of “Big Mama’s” by those who don’t know anything about eagles. And which is why many times you will see a female eagle swoop down on a loud heckling tourist and swipe his Tilly hat and deposit it 60′ or more in the top of a pine tree. Being a strong-willed female and a symbol of our country they will not tolerate being made fun of.

Young eagles are left to their own devices pretty much as soon as they start flying. As they are the avian equivalent of teenagers their parents are pretty much sick of them and have sent them out to starve or prosper on their own. They have taught them the rudiments of eagle lore, philosophy and life skills, but from now on it’s up to them.

The young eagles of course believe this to be highly unfair and constantly fly up and down the river calling desperately for their parents to feed them. The parents however having anticipating this, as this isn’t their first eaglet, have decided that this is a good time to visit the coast for a little R&R and are long gone. This eagle will soon discover that it is more productive to look for something to eat than to look for absent parents, and thus its life as a newly minted Bald Eagle begins.

It will be tough for a while as they perfect that snatch and grab thing on unwary trout in the shallows, and after a string of misses they will soon settle for anything dead and edible they can locate. This can be anything from a dead fish washed up along the river bank to roadkill, to unfortunately stooping to raiding the landfill for anything edible. These hapless eagles become the white and black trash of the eagle community and will likely wind up as crack heads or meth addicts. They should have spent more time paying attention to their parents and less time out behind the nest smoking and listening to heavy metal music. But sad as that may be that’s life in the wild kingdom.

This young eagle will probably go on to have a happy and successful life. Why? No reason really, it just looks so good flying along the river that it’ll probably make it. Since, as the writer of this story, I can give it any ending I want, I think today I will give it a happy ending, so good luck young eagle, keep those tail feathers clean. Remember I have editing privileges.