Dan's Papers - May 15, 2009 - Twentysomething...

I'm inspired by the blind courage a male swan showed me last Friday. As it has been reported widely, a female swan at East Hampton Town Pond is nesting again as she did last year, and it is very serious business for her. I pulled up alongside Town Pond to do a little animal observing. I made sure to stay about 50 yards away from nesting area, but within seconds of parking, I watched in amazement as another swan headed right for my car. It was the daddy swan and he was pissed. His head was down, his eyes were mad and he was charging. Within seconds he was viciously attacking my car, biting at my side view mirror. It elevated my heart rate enough to scare me. I was impressed.

Here I was, a giant monster car. And here was this swan, with no hands, no weapons, not even teeth - but he didn't care. Could he be killed? Yes. Could he be hurt? Without a doubt. Was this embarrassing for him to make such a big scene? Most definitely. But his wife and future kids were in danger and he didn't know of anything else to do. I started to think about what I would do if I were this swan in this situation. I probably would be like, "Honey, it's time to get out of East Hampton, there are giant monster cars that are going to harass us daily if we don't."

And I would pack up the eggs and the wife and fly to a nature preserve where I could live in peace.

But this male swan never let that thought go through his mind, and I learned a lot from him. His blind courage has earned him some respect, and large signs have been put out in front of the pond by government officials that read, "Please keep a safe distance from the swans."

I captured much of this swan attack on video, which you can check out on danshamptons.com. It's pretty funny.

I started to think a lot about American history in relation to this swan, and what, on a human scale, blind courage like this has accomplished. With June 6 coming up, I thought about the guys who stormed the beaches at Normandy, blindly running into a fight, with machine gun fire coming in from an elevated position and the chances of success slim, to free Europe from the Nazis. The entire operation was fully planned during a time without the communication or the satellite mapping abilities of today. There was no way of knowing whether or not we were going to be able to stop Hitler. There was no way of knowing for sure about important factors, such as the weather during the invasion, or whether or not the Germans took the bait at "Operation Glimmer," where we fooled the Nazis into thinking that we were invading there.

I thought about how Eisenhower had letters in his pocket during that invasion. One was a speech celebrating victory and the other was a speech apologizing for defeat. How crazy is that? He wasn't sure at all whether or not we were going to succeed, but he did it anyway and he planned for both. But he wasn't about to let his uncertainty discourage him from stopping the most evil empires the Earth has ever known.

The D-Day invasion has gone down in history as the most successful and important win in American history, and without this invasion, Hitler would not have been defeated and we would all be looking at a very different world today. A world much worse then the one we have.