Mein lieber Schwan

Let me tell you one of my favorite stories from university.

Back in the day, about six years ago now, I had a friend who worked as a waiter/organizer/jack of all trade at a ranch in California. This was not your typical rodeo ranch, though. This ranch catered to weddings. You could rent the whole shebang and get married there. There was a little outdoor chapel strewn with roses and ivy, a hall for dancing in, and-this was what won the brides over, I think-a horse-drawn carriage pulled by four elegant horses to whisk the bride from her pre-wedding cottage around the shining silver lake on which floated a flock of swans, and up to the chapel, where she could then process in all her glory to the strains of one of the most hackneyed pieces of music ever written*. It was immensely popular.

Now, my friend's job during these weddings was to seat the guests, act as waiter during the reception, and, crucially, make sure the swans stayed in the lake during the bridal drive. Because they didn't like to, you see. If a swan happened to waddle out of the water during the bridal procession, he had to run up and shoo it back in. Nine times out of ten, the swan went back in the water. But on that day, that hot, bright Saturday, as the strains of Wagner played in the background, the unthinkable happened.

The bride was coming. The guests were waiting. The music was playing. One of the swans got out of the lake. My friend hurried forward in the age-old pose of man trying to scare off poultry: knees bent, arms outstretched, hissing "Shoo!" This swan did not shoo. It looked at him. He looked at it. And then, in his words, "it made a velociraptor noise" and seized him by the crotch.

As any sensible 21 year old man will do when grabbed by the crotch by a giant waterfowl, my friend immediately began to scream and dance around, as the bird held grimly on and shook him. He said that it went on like that for an age, but in reality it was maybe twenty seconds before one of his colleagues ran up, seized the swan by the neck, and hurled it back into the lake. For a moment they thought it would come roaring back, but after some frenzied squawking, it settled back into the water.

"Are you all right?" my friend's colleague howled. They were clutching each other, shaken.
"I think so," gasped my friend, who had suddenly developed a perfectly rational terror of swans.

And then they heard it: a storm of applause behind them. They turned. There stood the entire wedding party, holding cameras and video recorders and applauding wildly. My friend straightened his suit jacket, bowed slightly, and hurried away. As he went he passed the bride in her carriage. She was laughing into her bouquet.

Later, during the reception, my friend was continually accosted as he walked around with trays of champagne.

"Are you okay, bro?" was the topic of conversation.
"I feel for you, dude. That thing looked like it wanted to eat you."

"I just wanted to crawl into the floor and die," my friend mourned when he told me this. "It was awful: first I was nearly emasculated by a swan to that damn wedding march, and then all the groomsmen got hammered and kept asking awkward questions. I'm never getting married! Not there! And there will be no swans!!" Swans, he concluded, are vicious, ruthless children of darkness.

I won't lie to you, I was pretty much on the floor crying with glee when he told me, myself. I'll never be able to sit through a production of Lohengrin without thinking about this story.

*How can anybody actually sing this with a straight face? I'd be grinning diabolically.