Alaska News

Bitten by a swan

At Lithia Park in fair Ashland, Oregon, I was bitten by a swan. Damn bird drew blood too.

Maybe it didn't like the bread.

But I bore the swan no ill will. Well, maybe a little. Truth to tell, when something so beautiful bites you, you wonder if it's a reflection on your character.

On the other hand, the bite was a petulant little snap, hardly in keeping with the swan's legendary grace. If the swan saw the flaws in my character, it should have spoken to me discreetly, like a fairy tale princess in disguise. Repent, wayward one, and never bring me day-old bread again ... Instead she got her magpie on.

I thought of the park swan when I read about the fine field work of the folks who pulled the arrow from the swan at Tern Lake on the Kenai. That was better than a fairy tale, a small victory of good over evil.

I also remembered the anger of an old neighbor in Chugiak years ago when some knucklehead killed geese that had stopped for awhile at Hidden Lake on the edge of Chugach State Park. He wanted to make sure that I understood, should there be any story in the paper about the goose-killing, that these weren't hunters who did the deed. He was a hunter, who had taken his daughter to watch the geese. Those who killed the birds weren't hunters.

He had choice words for them, the same he would have had for the person who put an arrow in the Tern Lake swan. There's a $1,000 reward for someone who helps nail the culprit. By now, if that sad sack reads, the wages of sin are more than $1,000 in shame.

If the culprit feels no shame, then maybe karma will put a pond in his future, where he'll go unarmed to feed day-old bread to bitter old birds. They bite.

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