Mating Season

On Saturday I met my friend from St. Cloud in Monticello. We gathered there to see the trumpeter swans. I like to go every year and watch them because they are amazing birds. When we got out of the car, our ears were assaulted. Trumpeter swans trumpet and golly gee, they are LOUD! Since the coldest days of the year are also the mating season for the swans, they're engaging in all kinds of head bobbing and posturing. The males raise their bodies up in the water and flap their wings making me wonder if the female swans look at them and are as impressed (or not) as we female humans are when men act all macho. A woman who lives next to the park takes it upon herself to feed the swans. She has a grain bin parked in her driveway. PVC pipes carry the grain down to the river bank. She fills up storage bins with grain for the swans to eat. She knows the bins are too tall for the mallards and Canadian geese who hang out with the swans. The wind was cold so we decided to get in the car and park along the riverbank where there were no trees so we could watch them without shivering. I brought my binoculars along. My friend noticed an odd shape across the river and asked me what it was. At first I thought it was a white barn but the sides weren't even. As I looked, I realized it was a wall of ice. Earlier that day I had read about a man in Big Lake Township. He heated him home with geothermal heating. He rigged up a water sprayer on a pole and using rebar for support, formed a giant wall of ice in his yard - just for the fun of it. I told her about the story and we decided we'd try to get a closer look at it. Since we were about 2 miles south of the bridge, we decided to cross the river and follow the river bank for two miles. Eventually, we found the house. Yep, it was a big wall of ice, 35 feet tall. You can look up the whole story in the Saturday Star Tribune but the man also has his own website-roger.mm95.com. As we drove away, we had to wonder, does this area of the Mississippi draw unusual people for some reason? You've got the trumpeter swan woman on one side of the river and the ice wall man on the other. Is it sheer coincidence? And what do their neighbors think of their endeavors?