Spring. Such a beautiful time of year. The natural world, released from the barren grip of winter, once again becomes saturated with life. Fruits swell with promise, flowers release themselves from the confinement of their bulbs. All of nature is at peace.
Or so it seems.
In fact, the arrival of spring brings with it a threat to runners everywhere.
If you have ever run close to a body of water, you will have probably come across one of the most graceful and majestic birds in existence – the swan. When facing this creature, you may feel tempted to stop in your tracks and edge slightly closer in order to gain a better view of its serene beauty. However, I will warn you now, if you come across a swan between the months of April and June, do not under any circumstance approach the bird. If you value your health and general well-being, you will run in the opposite direction.
In between the months of April and June, swans experience some sort of severe hormonal trauma. This coincides with the birth of their offspring, which they instinctively want to protect. It is the equivalent of a year’s worth of severe PMS.
Symptoms include:
1. Heightened aggression.
2. Heightened hostility.
3. Heightened anger.
4. Heightened rage.
5. A heightened capacity to become generally pissed off.
6. The will to injure any unfortunate creature that strays to close to their aggressive, hostile, angry, enraged, generally pissed off being.
All of these things combine to transform this:
Into this:
This is an image that would inspire fear in even the bravest of men. This swan is pissed off and hormonal. It is a creature at the mercy of its maternal instincts. It is deadly. Seriously, even Atilla the Hun would run a mile.
Aggressive swans are not a force that should be treated too lightly by passing runners. Let me demonstrate through the use of the following images.
Here is a swan taking on a goose:
Here is a swan taking on a dog:
And, finally, here is a swan taking on a full-sized deer:
Now, that is one angry mass of feathers.
However, I was not attacked by this ferocious creature. This week, on my run, I was attacked by a moorhen.
A swan is about a quarter the height of the average man. For those who don’t know, a moorhen is approximately 1/12th of the height of the average man. It is not a large bird. It would probably take at least thirty enraged moorhens to seriously injure an adult human being.
Nevertheless, when the excessively hormonal moorhen started to run towards me, I freaked out. Big time. I have never run so fast in my life.
The way towards improving my running times has been revealed. Evidently, I must steal a moorhen, bend it to my will and train it to chase after me whilst I run. It’s astonishing that I’ve never thought of this blatantly obvious solution before.
Or I could just stop eating as much cake, thus losing a bit of weight, therefore becoming light enough to run faster but, unfortunately, that doesn’t seem like a plausible option…
All of the Interesting Things I See When Running 