Like I’ve said before. You just never know what the day is going to bring when you get up in the morning. Just when I was wondering what I could possibly write about today, I ended up rescuing a baby swan! I know you’re all scratching your heads thinking, geez, first a bear, now a swan. This was not in my yard, however. I set off this morning to run errands in town and took my camera with me with the intention of stopping and taking a photo of Greenwood Lake, which is only a few miles from our house, to post here on my blog. Greenwood Lake is quite large and spans the border of New Jersey and New York. I had noticed a small park off to the side and decided there must be a good view of the lake from there. So, camera in hand, I set off to find a spot to take the photo. Several people were fishing, a man was sitting on a bench near the water just soaking in the sun, and a woman with a small child were enjoying the playground. Close to the shore a swan and her three swan-lettes [I know, I know, they don’t call them swan-lettes. They call them something awful sounding, cygnets. Now I ask you, where did they come up with that??] were paddling around. Near the water were a group of Canadian geese plus their babies [goslings, right?]. A pretty scene. Here it is:

As I turned and headed back to the car, the woman from the playground came up to me and asked if I knew anything about “ducks.” Well, gee, I don’t know I told her, depends on what it is. She said there was a baby duck in the playground area and he seemed to be hurt. She was worried that the mother wasn’t anywhere to be seen. Should she call a park authority? What should she do? Let’s take a look, I told her. Sure enough, there it was looking totally lost, but not hurt since it started clumsily walking away from me. SQUAWK! SQUAWK! SQUAWK! Nothing wrong with its voice either. Looked like a baby swan to me. Maybe a goose. Don’t know, never been this close to one before. Pretty darned adorable. The mother said she hadn’t wanted to pick it up since it might have germs. I said, no probably don’t want to do that, it would probably give you a good nip with its beak [germs or no germs]. Let’s try to herd it back to the water and see if anyone claims it, I told her.

So, off we started. I got a stick to keep it in line in case I needed to guide it a bit. I walked slowly, trying not to panic it and give it a heart attack since I was trying to help it, not make matters worse. Plus, I had to walk slow because the dear little thing kept tripping over its own out-of-proportion-to-its-body webbed feet. SPLAT! Face plant time! [Not me, the swan-lette.] The mother keeps telling me, get a picture of it, get a picture of it! Heck, Lady, I’m doing the best I can here just to keep it going in the right direction! It was fairly easy to herd once we got going, and pretty soon we were on the downward slope to the water. It was squawking like mad all the way, and I could only hope Mother Swan/Goose would hear it and come to claim it. It had the idea now and was picking up speed towards the water. Perhaps it could smell “mama.” Sure enough, the swan heard all the noise and recognized it as one of her own. She turned around and started swimming over to where the swan-lette was almost to the water. [Okay, Lady, I’m taking a picture now. Are you happy?] PLOP! Into the water it went to meet up with Mother Swan and sibs. Tomorrow’s headlines: CRISIS AVERTED AT LOCAL PARK: SWAN FAMILY REUNITED. And of course, the accompanying photo:

           
After admonishing her from a safe distance [I don’t need her throwing a hissy fit, so to speak!] for being a terrible mother that obviously can’t count or she would have known one of her kids had gone missing, I went about my errands in town.