"No, that *was* your tennis ball..."

A brief visit to the pond today (father in tow: that makes brevity a necessity...).

This was a tense moment (tenser in large; the cause of the dispute is more obvious too)! A family of three approached the pond with their little dog Archie (pictured): he had a ball, but rushed towards the swans enthusiastically and slightly aggressively (which I found surprising, given his "mighty stature"). The owners appreciated the danger much more acutely and shrieked "ARCHIE, NO!", but he continued his imprudent approach and dropped his ball to bark. The swans were all in the water but near the edge; the others retreated, but this one (the father I think) was unperturbed and simply turned to face the yapping little dog.

The ball rolled slowly into the water; the dog slowly realised that it had lost its ball.

Archie approached the edge (to his owners' terror), and Mr. Swan raised his wings and hissed:
"This is now my ball!"
"See that line? It crossed that line and is no longer yours: come in and steal my ball, I dare you!"
The dog thought long and hard... Too long in fact, because its owners had its lead back on it (probably saving it from its least wise move of the day). Mr. Swan then swanned off gracefully to rejoin his family: he didn't even want the smelly ball...

The oldest member of the (human) family was probably the most upset by the situation though:
"I even wrapped that ball specially..."

Sigh But, I went to the pond expecting a sense of loss: I received a message last night from Ann (a local animal rescuer) who told me that Gentle Cygnet had been taken to The Swan Sanctuary because of the wing injury which caused the blood I noticed yesterday. It was kind of her to tell me; it would have been distressing to arrive today to notice that one of the cygnets was missing. Her absence was very noticeable, and the other three were being quite leery: I've uploaded a picture of the three of them to my blipfolio here.

p.s. The Swan Sanctuary's Facebook page has an update saying that Gentle Cygnet is doing well!