Fred Marcellino - The Trumpet of the Swan

The cob’s wife pretended not to notice that her husband was showing off, but she saw it, all right, and she was proud of his strength and his courage. As husbands go, he was a good one.

The cob watched his beautiful wife sitting there on the tiny island. To his great joy, he saw her begin to turn slowly round and around, keeping always in the same spot, treading the mud and grass. She was making the first motions of nesting. First she squatted down in the place she had chosen. Then she twisted round and around, tamping the earth with her broad webbed feet, hollowing it out to make it like a saucer. Then she reached out and pulled twigs and grasses toward her and dropped them at her sides and under her tail, shaping the nest to her body.

The cob floated close to his mate. He studied every move she made.

“Now another medium-sized stick, my love,” he said. And she poked her splendid long white graceful neck as far as it would go, picked up a stick, and placed it at her side.

“Now another bit of coarse grass,” said the cob, with great dignity.

The female reached for grasses, for moss, for twigs—anything that was handy. Slowly, carefully, she built up the nest until she was sitting on a big grassy mound. She worked at the task for a couple of hours, then knocked off for the day and slid into the pond again, to take a drink and have lunch.

“A fine start!” said the cob, as he gazed back at the nest. “A perfect beginning! I don’t know how you manage it so cleverly.”

“It comes naturally,” replied his wife. “There’s a lot of work to it, but on the whole it is pleasant work.”

“Yes,” said the cob. “And when you’re done, you have something to show for your trouble—you have a swan’s nest, six feet across. What other bird can say that?”

“Well,” said his wife, “maybe an eagle can say it.”

“Yes, but in that case it wouldn’t be a swan’s nest, it would be an eagle’s nest, and it would be high up in some old dead tree somewhere, instead of right down near the water, with all the conveniences that go with water.”

They both laughed at this. Then they began trumpeting and splashing and scooping up water and throwing it on their backs, darting about as though they had suddenly gone crazy with delight.

“Ko-hoh! Ko-hoh! Ko-hoh!” they cried.

Every wild creature within a mile and a half of the pond heard the trumpeting of the swans. The fox heard, the raccoon heard, the skunk heard. One pair of ears heard that did not belong to a wild creature. But the swans did not know that.

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