This Week’s Distraction – a Trumpeter Swan

Yesterday, Mark and I threw a family birthday party for stepkid #4, which involved a bunch of cleaning, followed by the arrival of 4 kids, two significant others and my mom.  We drove to a local Mexican restaurant for lunch, had some birthday cake and opened a few lame presents.  By the time our highly sugared guests were shooed from the house, I had just enough time to walk around the lake with my 13-year-old female dog, Little Dipper.  The lake is only a wee bit frozen and looks like this.

A scene from our lake Sunday.

 Nearby, I saw a muskrat had come out for the last bit of sun and, well, I’m not sure what all a muskrat does on ice.  He or she did not care for my company for some reason and quickly plopped back into the water.

Muskrat chilling on ice.

Then I saw were these guys.  They didn’t seem to like my company, either, and kept flying right on by. 

Canada geese unwilling to stop in to say hi.

Nearby was the real surprise.  I had seen three swans on the lake from my distant bay window for several days and had assumed they were all mute swans.  We had a pair of mute swans nest on our lake this year and we very seldom see any native swans.  Yet there, hanging out with two mute swans yesterday was a trumpeter swan. 

Behind the two mute swans, a trumpeter swan.

Like most people who go visiting waterfowl, I took some whole, shelled corn with me, and soon the swans came over to sample some.  Clearly, the trumpeter swan had already been eating, so the corn was for dessert. 

Trumpeter swan forgot to wipe its mouth after its first meal.

The trumpeter stuck its mouth in the water, blew a few bubbles . . .

 
Trumpeter trumpeting in the water.

 . . . and cleaned its beak off.   Then it ate a little corn.

Trumpeter looking up from a bit of corn.

It didn’t eat for long, perhaps because corn is rather bland and my company equally so, and soon the trumpeter turned and floated away.

Trumpeter turning away.

 It’s a good thing I stopped by to say hi to the swans, because today, on my way home, all three of the swans were gone. 

And as a result, there is one less distraction from the ongoing task of marketing my book, From Zero to Four Kids in Thirty Seconds, about becoming a stepmom to those four kids I mentioned. 

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