I saw three swans this weekend.

The swans should have been winging north, but they weren't.

They were hanging back with the Canada geese and didn't look very well. One was all alone and I'm pretty sure at least one of the other pair couldn't fly.

If they don't get better fairly quickly something will find them soon enough and will kill them and eat them.

It's the Glacier way. It may be a beautiful place, but if there happens to be something wrong with you, something else figures it out in a hurry and will at least try to make you its lunch.

Many times, it will succeed.

A study of ungulates in the North Fork a few years back showed that something like 90 percent of all the deer, elk and moose died from predation of some sort. That, if memory serves me right, included hunting by humans.

In short, not too many critters choose the way they want to die. Something else does it for them.

I sometimes wonder what would happen if I broke an ankle and couldn't move and no one found me. What would come first? My money would be on the ravens. They seem to find everything and they make the rounds often.

I heard a flock of swans winging north the other night.

The evening was still and there was no wind and their calls, which sound like school children playing as heard from a distance, sounded closer than they really were.

I thought they may have been on the lake, but they weren't. They looked to be 12,000 feet high, winging their way in an elegant formation across the Divide.

That's where most swans should be this time of year, not on a creek with some geese, wearing a coat of white where everything else is brown.

Still, not all injuries end badly, even in Glacier.

I have photographed bighorns with horns broken clean off, mountain goats missing ears and horns, even a crippled mule deer with deformed legs that somehow managed to survive a summer.

But my guess is that sort of recovery isn't in the cards for these graceful birds.

A coyote will snatch them, a bald eagle will swoop down or an otter will come up from underneath.

Someone will have swan dinner.

Even if the truth of death is inescapable, it's not always an easy thing to ponder.

Particularly with swans.

Chris Peterson is the editor of the Hungry Horse News.