Swans Sulking, Chuckling, Telling Jokes, etc.

By Dan Rattiner

On many ponds in the Hamptons these days, magnificent white swan couples are paddling around, leading anywhere between one and eight of their cygnets, teaching them the ropes and showing them the sights.

The couples are mated to one another. And every spring they fly up from the southland to the particular pond in the Hamptons that they call their summer home where the female lays her eggs, sits on them for a month, hatches them and then, with her mate, monitors their growing up until finally, in late fall, they fly south.

At the present time, the children are teenagers, almost as big as their parents, not white, but a soft gray color. They know who is running the place, and who their siblings are.

The other day, I once again drove alongside Town Pond in East Hampton on my way home from Bridgehampton and observed the two parents and three teenagers that make their home there.

As far as I can see - and I pass them usually twice every day - the five swans have never left that pond for any reason whatsoever. They glide around. And they seem to have conversations with one another about not doing this or not doing that. There's a lot of trust. A lot of schooling. A lot of obedience.

This time, as I passed, I saw all five of them over on the far side of the pond where a family of four humans was standing motionlessly on the shore, taking pictures and otherwise relating peacefully with the swans. I drove around the pond and parked a respectful distance from this interspecies encounter, and walked over.

"Shhhh!" the human mother said to me. I stopped. "We are talking to them. I think they understand us."

There was a lot of cooing on the part of the humans, but no sounds at all on the part of the swans. These are mute swans, after all.

Nevertheless, there DID seem to be something going on here. The swans were quite attentive. They seemed alert but relaxed. They did not feel the need to stay in any particular formation. Maybe they WERE listening to what was being said, although with all the hoots and squeaks, I couldn't understand any of it.

As I left the pond, I thought, what must it be like to be a teenage swan and every single day and every single night be alone with just your parents, sleeping when they slept, eating when they ate, swimming in a line when they told you to and staying still when that was what was indicated?

Wouldn't you think they'd get a bit antsy about this? There's a whole world outside. They can fly. Maybe I haven't seen them do it, but there is little doubt that these days in September they surely can do it if they want to.

Wouldn't it be nice if ALL teenagers behaved like this - listening to their parents, showing them respect, doing what they say, not running off, not getting into car accidents or other sorts of trouble?

These were my thoughts as I drove home.

Later that evening, as the sun was setting across Three Mile Harbor from where I live, I was able to look out the windows at the swan family that is in residence at this end of that harbor. We are blessed with a swan family with, count 'em, six teenagers. And there they were, of course, just offshore the boats, gliding along in a neat little line behind - what was this? - just one white swan.

Just one white swan? What had happened? Had that son-of-a-bitch run off with a floozy? Had he died? Had he - well, what else could it be?

I soon found out. As the sun set further and further, I saw him way off to the right, in some weeds, maybe a hundred yards away. He was looking for something. Food, perhaps. I don't know. But the interesting thing was that though I saw him pad around way over there, for as long as I watched, which was about a half-hour, he never left, never came back to his family.

And what I concluded was that there had been a fight. I don't know who started it. Maybe him. Maybe her. And he was over there either because she told him to get out or because he said he was getting out. And he was messing around over there for a while until his feelings passed and he felt like returning home or he got a sign from her that he was welcome back home.

I never did find out. The sun set. Darkness fell. Whatever it was, during that night, they worked it out. Because in the morning, there they were, together again, the male proudly leading the way, the wife happily close behind and the six teenagers all in a row, beaks to tail-feathers, gliding silently along as if nothing at all had ever happened.

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