Nancy’s arms were already aching by the time she finally had the swan pinned. The big male had been struggling against the grip for good reason: a length of discarded fishing line had been cutting into his leg for two weeks, tightening with every step he took. For the people who had watched him suffer and fought to find help, this moment on the bank was the one they had been waiting for.
Rebecca and Amy had spotted early on that something was wrong with the swan. He shared a nesting area with his mate, who stayed close throughout, and both birds were a familiar presence to the people who knew the spot. But getting the right help proved harder than expected. The two women spent weeks reaching out, searching for someone with the skills and the clearance to actually intervene, before they finally got connected with Nancy.
When weeks of trying finally got somewhere
Nancy came out immediately. She knew the timeline was bad. Two weeks of fishing line wrapped around a leg means swelling, tissue damage, and the real possibility that the limb is already compromised beyond saving. The hope going in was that the line could simply be cut away. No one could promise that until they got close enough to look.
Getting close enough meant wrestling a full-grown swan. As Nancy put it herself after finally getting a hold of him: ‘He’s a big boy.’ The bird was strong, unhappy, and frightened, and his mate watched from a short distance while the whole ordeal played out on the bank. Nancy kept talking to him throughout, repeating ‘I got you, I got you’ in the kind of low, steady voice that is aimed less at the animal than at keeping your own hands from shaking.
The cut that changed everything
The fishing line came away cleanly. When the people watching leaned in to check the leg, the assessment was immediate and unanimous: ‘Looks good. Yeah, looks good.’ The swan walked away with both legs intact. Nancy’s arm hurt. Nobody cared.
Rebecca and Amy, who had refused to stop making calls during those weeks when it seemed like no one would come, watched him go. One of them said quietly, of the whole effort: ‘Those were trying to help him.’
The line that almost did not get cut
A single length of discarded fishing line was still looped somewhere on the bank, the same kind that had wrapped the swan’s leg in the first place.
The swan and his mate headed back toward the nest. Nancy’s arms ached, her hands were scratched, and somewhere behind her someone called out: ‘Bye, guys. Have a good nesting season.’ It was, under the circumstances, exactly the right thing to say.
