An ugly duckling story

It was a cold morning on the river, but over the weekend more moderate, for January, temperatures had melted some of the river ice. There was no broad shelf of shore ice for the geese to hang out on. Instead there was a strange layer of invisible, subsurface ice where they had gathered together. Rather than floating on the water the geese seemed to rest oddly on top of its wet surface, like Jesus geese. It looked cold and damp there to me, but as I gazed down on them I realized: What do I know about the comfort of geese?

Only a little. Maybe fifty percent.

And then I saw him! There was a grand, white bird sitting peaceably among the dark shapes of the other geese. A swan! A beautiful swan was living among all the geese like in some kind of a fairy-tale.

I was very excited.

But then it seemed too good to be true. We don't have swans in Minnesota. So I looked closer.

It wasn't a swan, rather it was a lone rock sticking out of the water that had been heavily covered in thick, fluffy, white snow.

Ah well.

Still, it was kind of lovely how these geese had raised it as their own.