Reply #107: It's salmon swimming upstream. Why do they do it?

[Cleita]

Well as little Salmon they work their way down stream while their parents are dying and being eaten on the way. The parents' time is over. So the Salmon that survive go live in the lake or the ocean for a few years until they mature if they haven't been eaten before that. But the time comes when they must spawn to propagate the species. Mother Nature makes sure that there is this urge to spawn. Their little noses turn black and they must find the stream they were born in. They won't spawn unless they go back to the mother stream.

However, Mama Nature gives them terrible odds of climbing the ladders of stones to the spawning grounds high up in the stream. Once they get there and spawn, then they are tattered and done. The new generation will be born and work their way down to the lake or ocean. The parents swim down stream, their lives are over and they know it. They will be eaten on the way down if they don't die first from exhaustion and get eaten regardless.

As somebody who had to help the Salmon go upstream by transporting them in buckets when a developer ruined their ladder in the stream with a culvert, it actually got slammed to me what life is about. I hope you understand the metaphor I present to you.