Much Ado About A Mute Swan – Part 3

So, you’re probably wanting to know if I ended up allowing Princess to move into the guest bedroom. The answer would be an affirmative ‘No’. You see, Princess, as beautiful as she is, was not toilet trained, and that certainly posed a problem when she hung out on my patio for too long. So, I thought allowing her to move into the guest bedroom was a bad idea.

But, that didn’t mean that Princess didn’t attempt to move into the house. One Sunday we were frantically getting ready for a play-date at the Children’s Museum in another town. Princess was walking the yard and knocking on the doors. I put the bowls of food out for her, but she didn’t want to have anything to do with them.

So, when I opened my garage door, Princess immediately ducked in, and I tried to shoo her out. We were late, and she’d have nothing to do with being shoo-ed out. She was royalty, by-golly, and an appointment with the Princess took precedent over a play-date with another 3-year-old. Sheesh!

Princess waddled all around the garage, looking at me like I was trying her patience. I explained to her that Noah had his first play-date with a little girl. I said, “Please, Princess. This little girl is so sweet and her mother also happens to be a good friend. My son’s future dating life hangs in the valence here, please mooovveee!!” Nope, Princess was just getting more and more ticked off. I’m sure to her I sounded like the teacher on Charlie Brown, the one that always says, “wwaaahhh Waaarrhhh Wahhh waah”. Finally, exasperated, I opened the door to my Honda mini-van, hoping that if I climbed into the car, she might go away. Nope, no sooner did the door open than did Princess attempt to fly in! And she almost made it, if it weren’t for her long legs and long wing span. Her 6-foot wing span simply wouldn’t clear the doors. I shut the door as soon as I could for fear she would injure herself, and I yelled, “Noah, quick!!! get the goldfish! make the goldfish trail!”

So, Noah made the Goldfish trail. Princess looked at me like, “Yeah, right, you think that’s going to work, Lady? I cannot be bought for the mere price of Pepperidge Farm Goldfish crackers”. Well, she did succumb to her hunger, and ask much as she would have liked to have us believe that Princesses did not indulge in mere mortal junk-food, she was no longer to control herself. And there she went, out of the garage, following the goldfish cracker trail over into the neighbor’s yard.

And we were able to escape and make the lunch and the play-date, although we kept my friend waiting 15 minutes. When I told my friend what happened, she just kind of looked at me funny. The look on her face was worth a thousand words. She was too polite to say anything and brightly smiled while I recounted my tale, but I could tell that she was thinking, “Yeah right. The dog ate your homework– the swan tried to high-jack your car. Uhhh huhhh.. That’s a good one. Not only is my friend 15 minutes late, she’s also losing her marbles”.

On the drive home, I was trying to think about why Princess had wanted to spend so much time at our house in the past weeks. And luckily I didn’t know at the time that would be the last day I would see Princess healthy.

(Stay tuned for part 4)

- Sarah Polyakov