Feeding the ducks

I was once chased by an angry black swan.

He got me, too, one sharp bite on my calf.

He was mean as a snake, and he would have gotten more of me if I hadn’t quickly jumped into my 1950 Volkswagen.

This all happened on the banks of the Kyll River near Bitburg, where I was stationed in the USAF in the late 1960s. There were flocks of swans -- most of them white, not black -- along the Kyll, which is more like what we’d call a creek here in Virginia – maybe 20 feet from bank to bank. I had noticed the swans many times as I explored the area, but this time a friend and I decided to take some leftover dinner rolls from the chow hall and feed the swans.

Maybe the black swan was having a bad day. In any event, nobody had told me that swans can be so, um, testy and territorial.

I thought about that angry black swan last week when I took some stale cornbread to Bryan Park to feed the ducks.

It was a pleasant fall day, and the ducks were cruising lazily back and forth in the lake. But when they saw me throw the first bit of cornbread, they quickly swarmed the area like a rugby scrum.

Feeding the ducks at Bryan Park took me back to my childhood. Our family doctor’s office was on Colonial Avenue near Byrd Park. Whenever my mother took me and my sister to the doctor’s office, we’d always bring along a bag of stale bread and feed the ducks in the park afterwards. Feeding the ducks was the reward for behaving ourselves.

Spending the afternoon at Bryan Park last week was a treat I had done nothing to deserve. It was a gift to myself, a bit of self-indulgence that I enjoyed more than I thought I would. I presume the ducks enjoyed it, too.

There was a swan at the lake last week, too, a white one. He seemed pretty laid back. There were no irritable black swans. That was a real plus.