The Swan Prince

 

The Swan Prince

   Once upon a time a handsome young prince named Sydney wandered away from his royal estate.  This prince, who happened to be a swan, considered himself a member of the winged aristocracy because long ago his great-great-great-great-grandfather was a royal swan of the King of England.  And that same lineage was shared by all swans as far as he knew.  They were all either princes or princesses.  Everyone else was just plain common. 

   Sydney was a curious fellow who enjoyed exploring new places and sampling exotic cuisine.  One day rather than follow his courtly flock to their usual freshwater ponds he decided to take a new direction.  Maybe for a change he would try someplace with saltwater, he thought.  As he flew over the maze of waterways beyond his estate he spotted a distant bay that looked promising.  There was something about its shape that seemed familiar.  Perhaps he might find some fresh eel grass or tasty little fish.  He banked into the wind and circled round to investigate.  

   After splashdown Sydney took a few minutes to check out the underwater menu before swimming into a tiny inlet.  He was surprised at how quiet it was.  Though a few boats were moored along the embankment there were no humans or noisy machines around. 

   Okay, he thought, this isn't as interesting as I thought it might be, so he turned back.  But just as he about to prepare for take off he saw a female swan floating near a bulkhead.  She was the most beautiful swan he had ever seen.  He couldn't take his eyes off her.  He paddled closer, pretending to forage in the shallow water.

   At first the little pen paid him no attention as she slowly spun in the gentle current of a rising tide.  She seemed disinterested in feeding with him and made no effort to graze at the seaweed by the boat dock.  Perhaps she just wasn't hungry, he thought.  Sydney tried a different approach. 

   He began with a few nonchalant wing flaps and feather combing.  When she remained indifferent, he ruffled more plumage and stretched out his curvy neck in that way the ladies like. 

   Nothing.  She was unimpressed and turned silently away as if he were not there.  Why was she being so aloof?  Sydney tried a few soft grunts in swan sweet talk.  No reaction.  Maybe she was naturally shy.  Afterall he was a prince.  Sometimes meeting royalty can trigger speechlessness. 

   The more she ignored him, the more enchanted he became.  Her small figure was oddly alluring and he found that twist in her head most beguiling.  Maybe she was not from around here.  She might be one of the tundra swan clan.  Unlike his flock, the tundra swans were great travelers and she might have strayed from her flight.  They were also pretty raucous, making a big racket heard for miles as they sped along their long trek.  He didn't understand much of their lingo, but he liked it better than the harsh squawking of the trumpeter swan clan.  His clan, being royal and all, never needed to talk so loudly.

   The way she rejected his advances made Sydney lose patience.  It was infuriating that she would rebuff his offers of love.  Her cold silence just made him angrier.  He was a prince.  No one ever turned away from him.  He pecked at her, lightly at first and then harder when she gave no reaction.  Furious he could not hold back and jumped onto her in a very un-princely way. 

   Suddenly with a flurry of bubbles the little swan pen sank beneath the water.  Sydney backed off nonplused.  That was not a swan-like thing to do.  Swans were not diving ducks.  Something was wrong with her.  What should he do?  He scudded over to the middle of the boat basin to think it over.

   A few moments later a human walked over to the bulkhead.  Using a long stick the man reached down into the water and snared the sunken swan.  He lifted her up and placed her on the dock.  Sydney could see that her legs were fettered with chains.  

   Now he understood!  She was a captive swan, probably bewitched by a sorcerer for some wicked design.  How cruel!  No wonder she shunned him.  She was surely restrained from talking to him by a very strong magic.   

  Sydney was heartbroken.  He had no idea how to release this beautiful damsel from the sorcery that bound her to this place.  He felt sorry for what had happened.  Swan princes could be very brave but also foolishly headstrong.  They were also not very good at solving puzzles.  There was nothing for him to do but gaze fondly at her one more time.  He bade her farewell for a love fated not to be.  Without a backward glance he paddled out of the inlet, never to return.  

The End.

This tale is a re-telling of an animal story that happened in May 1993 at my parents' former house in Virginia Beach, Virginia. Their home (which once used to be my home, too) was situated on Bay Island, a small island less than a mile inland from the southern mouth of the Chesapeake Bay. 

The back yard of this waterfront property had a fine view of Broad Bay which was part of the Lynnhaven River, a tidal estuary. That's the background of this picture of my parents, Barb and Russ Brubaker, taken when we first moved there. The tiny beach did not last long as countless storms scoured the island's shoreline forcing my folks to replace that original railroad tie bulkhead at least four times. (creosote timbers; pressure treated planks; aluminum slats; and finally granite rip-rap.) 

In the early 1970's my dad anticipated that his army career was about to end and he and mom decided that Virginia Beach was a perfect place for him to retire. They chose this house, a brick-built 1950s ranch style, because it was on a very quiet dead-end lane with just three houses. Two small side yards offered space for my dad to store cars, boats, and other junk. And along the front lane opposite was a small boat basin shared with a few neighbors that had with enough room for a half dozen shallow draft boats.  

That little boatyard became the center of my dad's next military career when in the 1980s he joined the U. S. Coast Guard Auxiliary. As a volunteer instructor and weekend watchguard for recreational boaters, my dad taught thousands of people how to safely operate boats, navigate, tie knots, and hoist sails. The picture here shows his last "big" motor boat. There were several others, and just outside the camera frame there were two sailboats, a rowboat, an aluminum punt, and a kayak. This boat basin is the setting for my story of "The Swan Prince".

When our family moved here in the 1970s the area was still semi-wild with a long section of Broad Bay that was part of a state park and then undeveloped. Many wildfowl like red knots, avocets,  brants, geese, etc. still used Virginia Beach's waterways for a rest stop during their annual migration across North America. It was also home to many more birds that inhabited the region year-round like herons, egrets, ospreys, eagles, etc.  In this photo my mom introduces her dog Lucy, a Cairn Terrier, to ten curious juvenile mallard ducks. The ducks are really just interested in begging for more corn feed. Behind Lucy is an unfinished paper-mâché animal, a cat, I think, that my mom made for her elementary school art classes.  

Here is Barb in her wooden rowboat out in the inlet with her previous dog Muffin, a West Highland Terrier. She named the boat, Mah Boat, and painted an Egyptian Eye of Horus on it after seeing it on boats in the Nile River during a tour of Egypt. Just beyond her is a small flock of mallard ducks. They were so tame and habituated to human activity that the hens would often build a nest right next to the front door. 

Here are a clutch of Canada geese cruising in the same place that Sydney the Swan shows up. Geese are  generally wary of humans and do not like to hangout with ducks. Some Canada geese migrate while others stay put. This is the second type, I think. They usually only came up on the lawn at night when they were more confident humans would stay inside. The location of their nests was more secretive but once the little geese were hatched they were a delight to see in family groups paddling out in the larger water behind our house.

Here is my mom again in Mah Boat, this time with the next previous dog, Katie, a Scottish Terrier at the bow. Despite her short legs, Katie was an avid swimmer who liked to dive for rocks. She also seemed to enjoy sitting under my chair as I practiced my horn. Few dogs or cats will do that without complaining very loudly.

This next photo was also taken by my dad, of course, one of thousands he took of his little boat basin and the landscape around it. This is the scenery for "The Swan Prince". My dad named his motorboat Micker, supposedly his childhood imaginary friend. The sailboat's name escapes me right now, but next to it by the shed is Mah Boat. A leak in the wooden hull had permanently laid it up, so my mom converted it into a raised bed/boat garden. She grew some excellent tomatoes there. Though it's hard to see, beyond Micker is another runabout motorboat and a sailing dinghy, both on trailers. My dad like to collect stuff.

So one day in May 1993, my mom saw a large swan out in the water by the boats. She alerted my dad who always had a camera at hand and he quickly went out to watch and take photos. This big bird had indeed fixated his attention onto a small fiberglass goose decoy. My mom had put it out  years before in a hope that it might attract some of the migrating wildfowl. It didn't. And neither did the fake heron, or the faux owl that she put up later. Most birds are not easily fooled. The exception was this one very amorous swan. 

The swan paid court to the goose decoy for some time, around a half hour or more I was told. I wasn't there at the time, so this is a family tale retold second-hand. Names were changed to protect the innocent. When the swan finally broke the decoy, my mother thought he seemed contrite and upset at what had happened. My dad rescued the decoy and put it up on the dock where the swan stayed around for a few more minutes until finally moving on. A few days later my dad submitted his photos to a weekly newspaper where two were published along with an account of this unlikely failed romance. My mom and dad always enjoyed telling this story and for years I always thought of it as a fairy tale come to life. I hope I haven't left anything out.

Sydney was a Mute Swan, Cygnus olor, identified by his orange bill topped by a large black knob. The species is native to Eurasia and was first introduced to North America in the mid-1800s to early 1900s as a decorative animal to adorn ponds in large estates, city parks, and zoos. Many of these imported mute swans escaped to establish breeding populations around the Northeast, Mid-Atlantic, Great Lakes, and Pacific Northwest regions of the United States. In some areas they are considered a harmful invasive species as their increasing numbers has an adverse effect on other waterfowl and can severely damage the densities of submerged native vegetation.

Mute swans mate for life and since medieval times they were often depicted in European art as a symbol of love and fidelity. They are also known to grieve for a lost or dead mate or cygnet. A male mute swan, called a cob, can range in weight from 9.2–14.3 kg (20–32 lbs), while the female mute swan, a pen, may weigh from 7.6–10.6 kg (17–23 lbs). In the wild a mute swan's life expectancy might reach 10-11 years, but in captivity 20-30 years is possible. Mute swans are actually not mute but make softer vocal sounds that are more like snorts, whistles, and hisses than the louder honking calls of Tundra Swans and Trumpeter Swans. 

My final photo of Barb and Russ Brubaker's home on Bay Island was taken on a very snowy winter day across the inlet looking back toward the house and boat dock. In the center is a flock of mixed ducks. They are hearty creatures who never seemed fazed by snow, ice, rain, or storm. There may be a swan in the picture too, but they're hard to spot since they are naturally camouflaged for snow.  

Chesapeake Bay, Hampton Roads, Virginia
Source: Google Earth 1996

This is a 1996 satellite view of the southern mouth of the Chesapeake Bay with the Virginia cities of Newport News, Hampton, Portsmouth, Norfolk and Virginia Beach. The southern boundary of this great bay is marked by Cape Charles is in the upper right corner and Cape Henry below. The thin line across the bay is the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel, a marvelous 17.6 mile bridge-tunnel complex that connects the Virginia mainland (near Virginia Beach) with the Eastern Shore of Virginia (aka the Delmarva Peninsula). Comparing this 1996 image with the satellite view of 2025 will show an appalling expansion of development in all the cities but especially along the waterfront areas. Today there is far less wilderness in the region and it makes me very sad to imagine what has happened to Sydney and his swan clan.  

The red dot marks my parents' home where they lived for 37 years. Unfortunately floods and storms became too much for them to manage dealing with all the boats, house maintenance, and their health issues, too. In 2007 they sensibly moved to a retirement community in south Virginia Beach. It had a large wetland pond and lots of semi-wild critters but it was not the same. Less than a year after selling the house on Bay Island a Nor'easter hit Virginia Beach and water came into the structure for the first time making it uninhabitable. It took three years before the new owner got the house repaired and raised 8 feet from its foundations, supposedly making it storm proof. Time will tell.

I've always been struck by a hidden pattern in the landscape of the Virginia coastline. You can see it in maps but it's more apparent I think in a view from space. It's a shape that always lets me find my former home. Can you see it? I've highlighted it in the next lower altitude image.

Cape Henry, Virginia Beach, Virginia
Source: Google Earth 1996

It's in a duck's bill as it twists to preen itself.
I believe a high flying swan would recognize it too.

My story of The Swan Prince
deserves some music.
Here is a beautiful rendition
of Camille Saint-Saëns, "The Swan"
performed by cellist Yo-Yo Ma.

This is my contribution to Sepia Saturday

where you should never feed a bird

unless you are prepared to feed its friends too.