The call from Sandy came in at about 1:00 pm on Sunday afternoon. “Barb,” the caller said. “I just saw two swans marching down Thorngate Lane, and I figured you were the person to call.”
Yes, in our neighborhood, when you are the head of the Homeowners Association you are the person to call.
A little background about the swans. Our subdivision, built on the former site of a golf course, has three ponds and it has a Canada Goose problem. For many years, a partial solution has been the annual 6-month rental of beautiful white swans, two per pond, to keep the geese away. Along with our black silhouette dogs, the swans allow most of us to avoid spending the summer continuously shooing geese, and cleaning their poop, off our driveways.
This year has been a traumatic one for some of our swan pairs. Harvey and Sheila, the couple in the pond next to our home, had a barren spring. They have spent the summer aimlessly swimming in their pond, without little cygnets to raise. Perhaps out of loneliness, they have adopted a solitary goose, one of the few we have seen this summer, and who swims alongside them. Perhaps it was injured, or abandoned by its flock, but it never leaves the pond and never messes the neighborhood.
The swans in the pond across the street from us have had a more tumultuous summer. A neighborhood coyote, of which we have many, was witnessed by a passerby tussling with the smaller of the two birds. The passerby intervened, allowing the swan to escape to the pond, but examination by the company from whom we rent the swans confirmed it had been injured in the melee. They recovered the swan and brought it to their headquarters where it is recovering nicely.
This brings us to the third pond and its swan pair. This couple did breed in the spring. Five cygnets became four, then three, then two, and then one and none as snapping turtles enjoyed Swan Pâté.
I am not a swan psychologist but perhaps this trauma is what led the pair to head for the streets to seek a happier place. The call of “Swans on the Run” came into Barb, and we set out to hunt the escapees down.
We finally corraled the runaways on a cul-de-sac in front of the home of a neighborhood family with multiple young daughters. We called the swan company to pick the swans up for the pond return. While we waited the 1/2 hour until the company truck arrived, we used a hose and sprinkler to keep the birds cool while five of the young girls looked on.
So yes, Sandy. Whether you need someone to battle corporations or to herd runaway swans, Barb is the one to call!
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