A family of white swans with their eight nestlings showed up at the police station in Tulchyn, a small city in Vinnytsia Oblast, on May 14. Local residents attributed the visit to the birds bidding farewell to three police officers who went on rotation to the frontlines in eastern Ukraine, surprising many locals.
Every spring the birds nest in Brovarsky
Lake on one side of the town and then set out with their nestlings for three
kilometers to the Nestervarsky Lake, located on the other side of the town, for
a living. In previous years the swans escorted their kids at dawn, locals say,
and every year via a different road, but only this year they went straight
through the city center during the day and made a stop at the police station.
“The swans came to the police station at 10
a.m. and where sitting near the building until our guys got into a minibus.
Then the birds came to the minibus and sit near it on the road,” says head of
police station in Tulchyn Vasyl Kostyshen.
Locals believe that white swans are a good sign for the police officers who are off to war.
Such unusual swans’ behavior touched hearts
of many. Tulchyn dwellers photographed and filmed the bird family. Some fed
them with bread.
This year busy traffic in the city center
was dangerous to swans so police officers decided to escort the birds’ family
to the Nestervarsky Lake by a car.
“We had to block the traffic in the
downtown for an hour and a half because little nestlings could not go fast,”
says Kostyshen. “Yet nobody complained because people believe that swans’
coming is a good sign for our officers who are off to war.”
The three police officers whom the swans
came to see off will be on a one-month military service in Kramatorsk, a city
in Donetsk Oblast which was temporary occupied by pro-Russian separatists in
2014, but is now is controlled by Ukrainian government.
Kyiv
Post staff writer Nataliya Trach can be reached at [email protected]
