“Take a look at this!” exclaimed the female, as she swam round and around.
“Ko-hoh!” replied her husband, who liked to have someone ask his advice.
The swan stepped cautiously out on to the island. The spot seemed made to order—just right for a nesting place. While the male swan floated close by, watching, she snooped about until she found a pleasant spot on the ground. She sat down, to see how it felt to be sitting there. She decided it was the right size for her body. It was nicely located, a couple of feet from the water’s edge. Very convenient. She turned to her husband.
“What do you think?” she said.
“An ideal location!” he replied. “A perfect place! And I will tell you why it’s a perfect place,” he continued, majestically. “If an enemy—a fox or a coon or a coyote or a skunk—wanted to reach this spot with murder in his heart, he’d have to enter the water and get wet. And before he could enter the water, he’d have to walk the whole length of that point of land. And by that time we’d see him or hear him, and I would give him a hard time.”
The male stretched out his great wings, eight feet from tip to tip, and gave the water a mighty clout to show his strength. This made him feel better right away. When a Trumpeter Swan hits an enemy with his wing, it is like being hit by a baseball bat. A male swan, by the way, is called a “cob.” No one knows why, but that’s what he’s called. A good many animals have special names: a male goose is called a gander, a male cow is called a bull, a male sheep is called a ram, a male chicken is called a rooster, and so on. Anyway, the thing to remember is that a male swan is called a cob.
The cob’s wife pretended not to notice that her husband was showing off, but she saw it, all right, and she was proud of his strength and his courage. As husbands go, he was a good one.
The cob watched his beautiful wife sitting there on the tiny island. To his great joy, he saw her begin to turn slowly round and around, keeping always in the same spot, treading the mud and grass. She was making the first motions of nesting. First she squatted down in the place she had chosen. Then she twisted round and around, tamping the earth with her broad webbed feet, hollowing it out to make it like a saucer. Then she reached out and pulled twigs and grasses toward her and dropped them at her sides and under her tail, shaping the nest to her body.
The cob floated close to his mate. He studied every move she made.
“Now another medium-sized stick, my love,” he said. And she poked her splendid long white graceful neck as far as it would go, picked up a stick, and placed it at her side.
“Now another bit of coarse grass,” said the cob, with great dignity.
The female reached for grasses, for moss, for twigs—anything that was handy. Slowly, carefully, she built up the nest until she was sitting on a big grassy mound. She worked at the task for a couple of hours, then knocked off for the day and slid into the pond again, to take a drink and have lunch.
“A fine start!” said the cob, as he gazed back at the nest. “A perfect beginning! I don’t know how you manage it so cleverly.”
“It comes naturally,” replied his wife. “There’s a lot of work to it, but on the whole it is pleasant work.”
“Yes,” said the cob. “And when you’re done, you have something to show for your trouble—you have a swan’s nest, six feet across. What other bird can say that?”
“Well,” said his wife, “maybe an eagle can say it.”
“Yes, but in that case it wouldn’t be a swan’s nest, it would be an eagle’s nest, and it would be high up in some old dead tree somewhere, instead of right down near the water, with all the conveniences that go with water.”
They both laughed at this. Then they began trumpeting and splashing and scooping up water and throwing it on their backs, darting about as though they had suddenly gone crazy with delight.
“Ko-hoh! Ko-hoh! Ko-hoh!” they cried.
Every wild creature within a mile and a half of the pond heard the trumpeting of the swans. The fox heard, the raccoon heard, the skunk heard. One pair of ears heard that did not belong to a wild creature. But the swans did not know that.
ONE DAY, almost a week later, the swan slipped quietly into her nest and laid an egg. Each day she tried to deposit one egg in the nest. Sometimes she succeeded, sometimes she didn’t. There were now three eggs, and she was ready to lay a fourth.
As she sat there, with her husband, the cob, floating gracefully nearby, she had a strange feeling that she was being watched. It made her uneasy. Birds don’t like to be stared at. They particularly dislike being stared at when they are on a nest. So the swan twisted and turned and peered everywhere. She gazed intently at the point of land that jutted out into the pond near the nest. With her sharp eyes, she searched the nearby shore for signs of an intruder. What she finally saw gave her the surprise of her life. There, seated on a log on the point of land, was a small boy. He was being very quiet, and he had no gun.
“Do you see what I see?” the swan whispered to her husband.
“No. What?”
“Over there. On that log. It’s a boy! Now what are we going to do?”
“How did a boy get here?” whispered the cob. “We are deep in the wilds of Canada. There are no human beings for miles around.”
“That’s what I thought too,” she replied. “But if that isn’t a boy over there on that log, my name isn’t Cygnus Buccinator.”
The cob was furious. “I didn’t fly all the way north into Canada to get involved with a boy,” he said. “We came here to this idyllic spot, this remote little hideaway, so we could enjoy some well-deserved privacy.”
“Well,” said his wife, “I’m sorry to see the boy, too, but I must say he’s behaving himself. He sees us, but he’s not throwing stones. He’s not throwing sticks. He’s not messing around. He’s simply observing.”
“I do not wish to be observed,” complained the cob. “I did not travel all this immense distance into the heart of Canada to be observed. Furthermore, I don’t want you to be observed—except by me. You’re laying an egg—that is, I hope you are—and you are entitled to privacy. It has been my experience that all boys throw stones and sticks—it is their nature. I’m going over and strike that boy with my powerful wing, and he’ll think he has been hit with a billy club. I’ll knock him cold!”
“Now, just wait a minute!” said the swan. “There’s no use starting a fight. This boy is not bothering me at the moment. He’s not bothering you either.”
“But how did he get here?” said