Published at 11:24, Friday, 05 February 2010

The poor creature hissed and spat like a thing possessed. Never having encountered a demonic swan before, we bolted.

Both of us. Bouncy, fluffy, young husky-looking dog, trotting happily from one direction. And me, sauntering aimlessly in inappropriate boots from the other.

Arriving at the same water’s edge point simultaneously, together we took full impact of fearsome hissing, each made an involuntary leap for safety and with impressive displays of cowardice, we bolted.

“Oh dear, she’s hopeless,” said the trembling dog’s owner. “She’s terrified of swans.”

“Can’t say I blame her,” I gasped, trying to regain balance with a modicum of hastily-gathered dignity. “That one’s in a foul mood.”

My new friend, fluffy, fellow yellow-belly, cast me a shy upwards glance of solidarity – like you do when you’ve found a kindred spirit.

I, suspecting we’d escaped imminent attack by the skin of our teeth, flashed back a similar expression of grateful unity.

She pricked up her ears, set her tail jauntily and waltzed off with the exaggerated swish and swagger of a catwalk model. Ever so slightly impatient, she egged on the lady she was taking for a walk to hurry up – out of harm’s way.

It must be nice to have a tail you can set jauntily in times of crisis. If only to pretend you were never really scared in the first place, it must be useful.

Wish I’d had a jaunty tail to flourish snootily – the better to mask embarrassment and move on.

Monster swan – Hissing Sid –continued his grubbing in the mud on Talkin Tarn’s shoreline, pausing only to aim hisses and spits at walkers on the footpath.

A nasty piece of work, I reckoned – one given to fiery outbursts of fury should lunch fail to meet usual high standards or be disturbed by strangers out for a stroll.

A male, I deduced – not only from his impatience and filthy bad temper but also from the big black knob on his beak. Angry males shouldn’t be messed with at lunchtimes. Especially not nasty ones with knobs on beaks.

Walk on by. Look the other way.

But later it became clear, he hadn’t actually been nasty at all. Sid hadn’t been deliberately aggressive, was in need of no Asbo.

He was certainly no demon – just poorly, in pain with a seriously sore throat and desperate for help.

A concerned reader cast light on the sorry state of our sad, hissing swan. A reader who hadn’t looked away; one who hadn’t walked on by. A Good Samaritan.

Mr Tony Nuttal, from Hayton – a regular visitor to Talkin Tarn – had taken time to peer more closely at the beautiful bird, for a clue to reasons for its agitated demeanour.

He found Sid had fishing line in a tangled mass around his beak, and spilling from his mouth. He feared the line’s hook may have been inadvertently swallowed with a previous lunch, to lodge dangerously in his throat.

Mr Nuttal alerted a member of the tarn’s staff but days later was upset to find Sid still struggling with pleading hisses for help.

“It seems ironic that although the tarn is in a position to sell duck food and charge for car parking, no-one seems to be able to look after the welfare of the animals that live on the tarn,” he said.

He reported the bird’s distress to the RSPCA, who rescued the poor thing the following day.

A city council spokesman said the swan was not resident at the tarn and could have picked up the fishing line anywhere on its travels – which seemed a bit harshly dismissive to me.

But I have no room to talk. Pots and kettles, eh? I bolted. I walked on by.

On a Good Samaritan scale of one to 10, I’d rated below zero.

And there, I guess, is a salutary reminder for all of us – me, the runaway fluffy husky, the fisherman who carelessly discarded his line and the people who run a country park with a no-sweat-over-sick-non-residents policy.

What a good job it is there are people like Mr Nuttal around.

We should all try harder to be more like him.

Where would that majestic, unhappy creature have been without him?

A man with a care for a sad swan’s welfare; one who made persistent efforts to secure rescue and have Sid returned to rude health.

I hope he’s around at the tarn, should ever I be taken ill while out walking... not least because I don’t live there either.

Published by http://www.newsandstar.co.uk