{"id":1077,"date":"2007-12-17T13:36:31","date_gmt":"2007-12-17T18:36:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/1077"},"modified":"2007-12-17T13:40:22","modified_gmt":"2007-12-17T18:40:22","slug":"its-even-better-when-you-help","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/1077","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;It&#8217;s Even Better When You Help&#8230;&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Via Spiegel online&#8230;&nbsp;<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<h3><a href=\"http:\/\/www.spiegel.de\/international\/zeitgeist\/0,1518,523762,00.html\">Petra Ditches Pedal Boat for Real Swan<\/a><\/h3>\n<p class=\"spIntrotext\">Petra&#8217;s year-and-a-half love affair with a plastic pedal boat made headlines around the world. Now, though, the black swan from M&uuml;nster has found herself a real swan to snuggle with, leaving the boat in the lurch.<\/p>\n<p><!-- OAS_RICH('Middle2');  \/\/ --><\/p>\n<p>Swans, Wikipedia tells us, usually mate for life. Divorce, though, the entry goes on, &quot;does sometimes occur, particularly following nesting failure.&quot; Which perhaps explains why Petra, the famous black swan from the German town of M&uuml;nster, has ditched her boyfriend for a new beau. It is, after all, difficult to nest with a giant, plastic pedal boat.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Life is too short to stay hung up on indifferent lovers.&nbsp; On the other hand&#8230;never underestimate the power of love&#8230;\n<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Just a few days after having moved into her winter quarters with the pedal boat she fell in love with over a year and a half ago, Petra began making eyes with a newcomer. The male swan is just as white as her previous true love, but he is made of feathers and blood instead of plastic. &quot;She seems to accept him and allows him to eat out of her food dish,&quot; a spokeswoman from the M&uuml;nster zoo, where Petra spends her winters, told the local paper. Nobody, though, seems to know where the new swan came from. &quot;He just showed up&#8230;&quot;<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Okay&#8230;it&#8217;s the hopeless romantic in me&#8230;but there&#8217;s a story somewhere here to be written about a little swan who fell in love with a lifeless hunk of plastic and wood that cold and indifferent fate had cruelly made to resemble her soulmate&#8230;and how she nonetheless loved it so wholeheartedly that a spirit began to take root and grow within that drifting lifeless hunk of plastic and wood&#8230;until one day it awakened&#8230;and embodied as a real swan.&nbsp; Of course that&#8217;s where the new swan came from&#8230;<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Still, a love affair with Paul would certainly be a step up from an infatuation with a swan-shaped pedal boat. And there is so far no indication that Petra is treating Paul merely as a rebound relationship. They spend much of their time swimming side-by-side. And Petra, it should be noted, isn&#8217;t known for her philandering. A number of male swans have attempted to make her acquaintance over the last two year &#8212; but Petra has rejected them all.\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Perhaps&#8230;&nbsp; Just saying&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Via Spiegel online&#8230;&nbsp; Petra Ditches Pedal Boat for Real Swan Petra&#8217;s year-and-a-half love affair with a plastic pedal boat made headlines around the world. Now, though, the black swan from M&uuml;nster has found herself a real swan to snuggle with, leaving the boat in the lurch. Swans, Wikipedia tells us, usually mate for life. Divorce, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1077","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1077","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1077"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1077\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1077"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1077"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1077"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}