Pond is 'Swan Lake' for Worthington couple

• Taking a dip

The two swans owned by Bob and Betty Demuth of Worthington swim together on Lake Okabena’s Sunset Bay.

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WORTHINGTON — People passing by Sunset Bay on the southwest edge of Lake Okabena may be lucky enough to spy two swans gracefully gliding across the water.

These swans aren’t permanent residents of the bay, however. They’re just taking a little vacation from their usual habitat — a pond at the Fox Farm Road home of Bob and Betty Demuth.

“I suppose they just swam down the creek,” Bob explained about how the birds migrated from their house to the lake. “Last year, they stayed here until about the first of September, then they swam down there. This year, they were here until about June 1, then they disappeared, and we found them on Sunset Bay.”

The Demuths got their first swans more than 15 years ago.

“I just thought there should be something on the pond,” Bob recalled. “We’d had ducks, but I wanted something larger and something unique, so I got a pair of swans.”

There are few people who breed swans, Bob explained, but pairs can be purchased from a hatchery. A female swan is called a pen; a male is a cob; their babies are cygnets.

“This year, I had two males, so I traded one male for a female,” Bob said. “She was supposed to be 3 years old, then at that age they can breed, but she apparently was not because she didn’t lay any eggs this year.”

Two years ago, a hen swan was sitting on her nest on the Demuth property when a predator killed her.

“As far as my research, a fox can’t kill a swan, and one coyote would have a problem, because the male would come to her rescue,” Bob detailed. “The minute you try to catch one of the other, the other one comes to its rescue. So someone said it was either a cougar — which is highly unlikely — or two coyotes.”

Swans are highly territorial and don’t like any other birds infringing on their habitat. Two trumpeter swans have regularly visited the Demuth property, a source of agitation for the resident swans.

“The cob would chase them all morning,” said Bob with a chuckle. “They come back every year, the same pair. I can tell because there’s a red band on their necks with a code on it. This year, they were here for about a month, then they left and one swan would come back — I assume the male — because apparently the female was on a nest, but I haven’t seen them since.”

While the trumpeter swans are free to come and go, the resident swans have their wings clipped so they can’t fly away.

“I put them in the barn and feed and water them all winter,” Bob explained. “Next spring, about the first of March, I chop a hole in the ice and put an aerator in there, and within two days I can turn them out. The cold water doesn’t bother them. They’ll stay out until about Dec. 15.”

Because the birds are used to him — and he’s the source of their food — the swans let Bob get pretty close, but they are wary of other people. If the birds don’t make their own way home this fall, he will have to catch them with a net and haul them back home.

Although the Demuths miss seeing their swans regularly, they are glad the public has the chance to view the beautiful pair on Sunset Bay.

“So they’re really not my swans; they’re everybody’s swans,” Bob said. “They do attract a lot of attention. What I’d like to do is get a breeding pair and give it to the city. That way they could have their swans, and I could have mine, because they won’t be in the same pond.

“I’m just really happy that people enjoy them.”

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