and hey, while you’re at it, quit blaming us for eating the salmon, okay?  for one thing we’ve been eating salmon before you humans even figured out what a salmon was.  for another, you wouldn’t be having this problem with fewer salmon if you hadn’t gone and built fifty-thousand dams (or whatever, we lost count) along the columbia river and hey, on EVERY OTHER RIVER in the pacific northwest!

and now you’re whining.  wah, there aren’t enough salmon!  wah, why aren’t there enough salmon?  there used to be millions and millions of them, but wah, where ever did they go?  couldn’t possibly have anything to do with all the DAMS you built, oh hell no.  no, couldn’t have anything to do with all that rampant out of control canning industry shit you decided to pull some seventy years back?  no, of course not!  wah!  wah-de-wah wah!  it must be the SEA LIONS!

well, we sea lions say, solemnly, Fuck You.

there was enough for all of us.  back before those pasty colored humans showed up, there were humans who had it all figured out.  they could feed everyone all year, and we could feed ourselves and our young seasonally, and the salmon were just fine with the arrangement, and if anything it seemed to encourage them.  because there were MILLIONS of them, the lakes and rivers and ocean teemed with them!  they would swim upstream to spawn, and on the way we’d eat some, and the smart humans would eat some, and the bears would eat some, and then the salmon would get to their lakes and spawn, and the adults would die, and more bears would eat, and weasels and other creatures, and hawks and vultures, and the entire mountains were fertilized and made rich by salmon.  and then in spring the babies would all head down on the journey to the ocean, and it would start all over again, and EVERYTHING WAS JUST FINE, until the pasty colored humans showed up.

and then it all went to hell, but NO!  NO, IT’S ALL THE SEA LIONS!!!  we’re EATING YOUR SALMON!

and again we say, Fuck You.  the salmon are not yours.  the salmon are not ours.  the salmon do not belong to the smart humans or the bears or the hawks.  the salmon do not belong to the mountains or to the sea.  the salmon belong to the salmon.  the salmon bring life to us all.  which makes them kind of the opposite of humans, who seem to bring only confusion, dams, and extinction.

we are mad at you right now.  your young don’t even know what is going on, do they?  are you embarassed to tell them how foolish you are?  or do you really believe it when you’re all like WAH!  THE SALMON ARE OURS!  WE DESERVE IT!  KILL THE SEA LIONS!

yeah yeah.  you are living out your own curse, but unfortunately you just have to visit it upon the rest of us too.  typical.

hatefully, but solemnly

The Sea Lions