He is black, she is white. He is small, she is huge. He’s male, she is female. He is rare, she is for rent. Both together keep travel busses full of tourists and school classes entertained, show off in front of Japanese and American camera teams, and take care that for Peter Overschmidt, owner of the local boat rental service, business is going well this summer. He’s her righteous owner, by the way. And when he comes into his office, looks out of the window and sees the stranger court her, he thinks: “The day’s my friend.” The story as such started rather sad: Two years ago, Overschmidt bought two huge, swan shaped paddle boats, a “swan lady” of 1,50 m and a fitting drake. Both were tied to the shore side by side each night, until one morning one of the boats was found burnt out and molten. The plastic beauty, now alone, was henceforth tied to a buoy in the middle of the small lake in the city of Münster by the resident sailors. Her looks appealed to a lonely black swan, whose species, originating from Australia and not at home in these lines of latitude, only resides in parks and zoos. Since May, he is drawing his circle around the plastic swan boat, never getting too far away from “her”. Neither the beginning of the mating season nor the end of nesting season distracted him, and ornithologists claim he has formed a deep, if somewhat onesided relationship to the swan boat. The only living swan on the lake, and probably the only one of his particular kind in a wide area, he had, in his loneliness, been looking for a surrogate partner; had he not found his plastic lady, “he might have taken a liking in one of the buoys”. What happens though when owner Peter overschmidt rents the cool blonde out to tourists? “He followed us across the lake and we fed him crackers”, says teacher Ute Klaes who rents the paddle boat regularly on weekends to cruise the lake with her six year old son Jan. “Once he was distracted by people on another boat offering him food, and he lost sight of us. When he noticed he had lost us he started searching frantically, and wailing loudly, as if he’d lost his mother.” It seems to be quite exhausting, having to follow your unrecuitd love around the clock. Escpecially on weekends, when the paddle boat is rented out most of the day, the swan is pretty groggy in the venings from chasing his beloved across the lake.
Similar thing happened to me. Until the day of that tragic accident... Oh why, oh why, did I take to the Pin Museam!
Oh dear. I hope the poor cob isn't going to get stuck waiting for her to fly back to meet the family waters. Hsing is there any mention of how long this been going on? Less or more than a year?
[quote:2f3bcd65cd="Rincewind"]Similar thing happened to me. Until the day of that tragic accident... Oh why, oh why, did I take to the Pin Museam![/quote:2f3bcd65cd] Rincewind should never have given his heart to a balloon.
It's been going since late April, definitely May. I don't know if he's going to fly anywhere anyway - these species is actually located in Australia, and this one probably escaped from a park or a private zoo. He might be stuck in the wrong place to follow his instincts.
I can't deny that Australian men are odd ducks... It looks like the type of swan that lives where I grew up, they don't migrate far because the weather doesn't get that cold (no snow or anything silly like that). The Muenster council may just have to import another Aussie swan to keep him company.
Update: The swan is still following the boat around, and winter is already here. I've been running around the lake a week ago, and he looks a lot more tiny next to the boat than the photos suggest. The local zoo decided to take them both in for the winter, in one of their ponds; the lake is connected to it, and they moved the boat there bit by bit, and the swan followed. They're both there since Monday. It's nice from the owners of the boat to give it away; it will probably take more damage even in a zoo pond than when being stored away over the winter.
