Today was the annual salmon fry release into West Hylebos Park. The Issaquah Salmon Hatchery gifts our local elementary schools with fertilized salmon eggs every year. While the salmon eggs grow into salmon fry, the students learn about the life cycle of wild salmon. When the fry are large enough to survive in the wild, the students bring the young salmon over to the park and set them free. In the past, this has been a rather laid-back event; school buses arrive at the park, the kids take their salmon fry down to the bridge crossing West Hylebos Creek, name them, release them, return to the meadow for lunch, then head back to school. The city of Federal Way really went the extra mile this year, turning the salmon release into a fantastic event.
I arrived at the park around 9 a.m. and was instantly startled to discover that the Historical Society of Federal Way had painted the old Denny cabin a hideous gray. I just stood in the parking lot with my jaw agape. I knew they were going to paint the cabin, but I wasn't expecting them to paint it dove gray. At the end of the day, when this tired old woman left the park, she was delighted to discover that the gray paint she'd seen in the morning had just been an undercoat and that painters were busy painting over the gray paint with a much more reasonable shade of brown. It looks great, but, I have to admit that it's going to take a little getting used to. The cabin has been a very red shade of brown for as long as I can remember. All of the red is gone now, leaving the Denny cabin almost the color of chocolate. Hey, who doesn't like chocolate?
The Historical Society of Federal Way opened up the old Barker cabin for the day so that the kids could go inside and see how their ancestors lived when they first settled in the Pacific Northwest. Between Panther Lake Elementary School and Camelot Elementary school we had about a hundred students in the park, who were divided up into six groups, accompanied by teachers and volunteer leaders.
Mayor Skip Priest started the morning off with a short speech, during which he announced the Storming the Sound with Salmon project. This grant will allow the City to expand salmon rearing to more schools and introduce stormwater education into our classrooms. He also introduced the people who would be in charge of all of the activities that were slated to happen today. In addition to the kids visiting the old Barker cabin, volunteers from the Issaquah Salmon Hatchery were going to dissect salmon so that the kids could learn about internal salmon anatomy, volunteers from EarthCorps were going to lead a salmon life-cycle game, salmon fry were going to be released into West Hylebos Creek, I was going to walk the kids over to Marlake and teach them about the life-cycle of frogs and how to find wildlife in the park, the kids were going to participate in habitat restoration by placing mulch around the young native plants that we planted in our latest restoration area several months ago, and each group would then plant a Western Red Cedar seedling. The day would wrap up with a picnic lunch in the meadow.
Mother Nature cooperated with us in so many ways. First of all, she presented us with a bright, sunny, 68 degree F. day, without a cloud in the sky.
As late as last Saturday, our local weather-people were predicting rain, tapering off to showers in the afternoon. Instead, there wasn't a cloud in the sky. My face got sunburned even though I was wearing a ballcap with a pretty substantial bill.
You couldn't ask for a prettier day, or a prettier place, to have a picnic lunch!
That was just one of the fantastic gifts Mother Nature presented us with today. She also gave us the very first land snail of the season, which, of course, immediately began it's annual trek across the gray gravel trail, amid the thunder of several hundred 5th-grade feet.
I led the kids on a walk down to Marlake, where I taught them about the life-cycle of frogs. Mother Nature dug into her bag of tricks and came up with a different surprise for every group.
I saw a little garter snake down by the edge of the lake, but immediately after I spotted it, a crow swooped down out of a nearby tree, snatched the little snake out of the grass, and gobbled it down. Later, another garter snake crossed the path in front of us and disappeared into the underbrush on the other side.
Another group spotted a tiny baby brush rabbit. It was so small that you could have put it in a teacup.
One of the mother mallards decided to bring her babies out on the lake for the very first baby train of the season.
Although most of the amphibian eggs in the lake have hatched into tadpoles, this beautiful little pouch of amphibian eggs decided to float within a foot of the lake edge, then stayed there through four entire tours. By the time I took the fifth tour down to the lake, I could see that the pouch of eggs was floating away, and I couldn't find them at all for the final group of kids.
A lot of the kids weren't nearly as impressed by the amphibian eggs as they were by the fact that the trout were hanging out, bugging, really close to the edge of the lake. The kids could see the fish milling around near the pond grass and breaking the surface of the water. Those fish were the stars of the show!
I must have spotted at least thirty, yeppers 30, red-legged frogs in the park today. They were everywhere! I spotted six here, and six there, and five somewhere else, and another three in the next pool of water. The only place I didn't spot any frogs was under the bridge on the Brooklake spur.
I had to woman my station, giving one frog talk after another, so I didn't get to see any of the salmon fry get released. One group of kids got lost on their way to West Hylebos Creek though and after I turned them around and got them headed in the proper direction, I had an opportunity to look in their bucket and see all the little fish they were about to release into the wild.
After the kids departed, I walked down to the bridge over West Hylebos Creek and spotted one of the fry happily swimming around in it's new home. I decided to name it Hylebos Harry. Go, little Harry. Stay safe, hide from pedators, find your way to the ocean, grow as big as you can, and come back to us in a few years. Calm seas and following winds, as sailors say. We're rooting for you, little guy!
And so, peace and quiet was once again restored to the park. After the kids were gone, I retired to Dana Buck's house, where we sat on her sofa, facing Marlake, drinking wine, talking about our day, and watching as, one at a time, the ducks and birds that had gone into hiding when all of the kids showed up, returned to the lake. The perfect end to a perfect day. What's not to love?
Teri I. Lenfest
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