Straight from the start I told Daria and I knew myself that this was a wild animal and
this will return to the wild and we were determined to bring it up that way.
I tried to keep an emotional distance.
Didn't work very well.
It's impossible.
He was a bird that kind of became a member of our family.
I'd never seen anything like that and I never expected anything like that.
So I remember that day we'd taken the dogs for a walk and we were in the process of trying
to get them all back into the car, and of course Korba ran off into the bush 'cause
she'd found something.
And then I saw that little bird and there were no other birds around and then Scott
was like 'You know, if you put him in the water he will die.
It's the middle of winter so he will die there.'
So we decided that we would take him home, and then apparently he decided that we were
his parents.
It was a bit complicated, the first weeks with him.
He used to follow us round everywhere you went.
We always had to have one of us had to be in the room with him at a time so we used
to take it in turns 'I'll go and make the coffee if you stay with Swanny.'
' You stay with him because I have to go to
the toilet.'
It was pretty much like that.
Yes well he slowly turned from a nice little grey ball of fluff into...Quite, I would say,
a bossy and nasty guy.
Independent, an independent swan.
He got more and more able to take what he wanted as his neck grew longer and his legs
grew longer.
And he discovered the toilet.
Oh yes, loved the toilet.
He used to love it, you know and it was the best playground ever.
He became quite sneaky I think as he gold older.
I remember him pecking my mother in the back of the car one day and mother would go 'That
swan just pecked me' and the swan would be sitting there.
I'd say 'No mum, come on' and he did this over and over again and he also got quite
angry too.
I remember if he didn't get his way he used to stomp off and you knew full well he was
angry when he wasn't happy with the way things were.
So we used to take him on road trips.
We used to load Korba and Swan in the car and off we'd go to one of the lakes or up
to the Tamar River somewhere and he was very interested in everywhere that we went.
We always imagined he was working out where we were going and hopefully creating memories
that he can used to navigate when he gets older.
I used to train him down the runway down here.
I used to flap my arms and he used to run down the backyard after me but we'd always
stop before we got to the fence because he never used to be able to get airborne.
But then we took him to my brother's place.
I got my wings out and ran down the runway with Swan right behind me and I got to the
end of the runway and he just kept going and launched into the air.
I was so proud.
It's like when your little boy rides his bike for the first time.
It was incredible.
So a couple of weeks ago I had to go to work in the morning and Swan chirped at my quite
loudly and I knew he wanted something so I stood at the kitchen window and he walked
out here and lined up on his runway as he does and ran down the runway and took off
and flew over the fence and yeah, that was the last I saw of him.
From the very beginning we knew that the day he will decide that he's ready to go, he should
go and we tried not to get attached but he forced us.
He just forced us to love him by constantly being with us, by sitting on us, by demanding
things, by forcing us to learn his language, and then he left us!
A very ungrateful little thing!
Very ungrateful but I wouldn't trade it for the world.
I mean the six months we had with him was jut lovely - amazing - yeah.
It really was.
A wonderful experience bringing up that swan.