Todd and Lisa met during their freshman year at Iowa State. It was the fall of 1970, and a mutual friend set them up on a blind date. As they grew closer and began to fall in love, their favorite activity was to picnic by Lake La Verne and feed the swans, Sir Lancelot and Elaine. In the fall of 1973, Todd proposed to Lisa next to the lake as the swans silently watched.

Now, 25 years later, the couple has returned to Iowa State to reminisce about their college years. Todd surprised Lisa by arranging a romantic picnic by Lake La Verne. Their minds were flooded with memories the nervousness of their first date, their first kiss under the campanile, the endless hours spent talking and Todd's romantic proposal next to the swans.

Todd and Lisa walked around Lake La Verne to complete their blissful afternoon. They decided, once again, to feed the swans. As they approached the swans‚ pen, Sir Lancelot and Elaine spread their wings, opened their beaks and began hissing at the couple. Lisa reached out her hand to give Elaine a piece of bread. The swan didn't take the bread but instead ferociously flapped her wings. Sir Lancelot joined in the hissing and flapping. He reached his head out and smashed Todd's hand in his beak.

"The tradition has always been to sit by the lake and feed the swans," said Gaylan Crim, agronomy research associate and member of the ISU Trumpeter Swan Restoration Committee. "The purpose of the swans was to be picturesque."

While Sir Lancelot and Elaine make a pretty picture swimming around Lake La Verne, the swans have developed personalities of their own. "These are real territorial," said Bill Larson, who helps feed the trumpeter swans. Sir Lancelot and Elaine are very curious and like to investigate. "They can't fly," Crim said, "so the only way for them to wander is to walk."

The first Sir Lancelot and Elaine were placed on the lake in 1935. They were mute swans, a European species, which are neither as territorial nor aggressive as trumpeter swans. The current Sir Lancelot and Elaine have been living on Lake La Verne since October 1995, and until this time the university did not have a problem with inquisitive swan. "[The trumpeter swans] will come up and bite," Larson said. "The mute swans never did that."

Sir Lancelot and Elaine are currently restricted to a fenced-in area on the west side of Lake La Verne. "We had to put them in the pen for their safety and everyone else's safety," Crim said. It would be ideal to let the swan freely swim in all of the lake, but the swans like to roam campus and Lincoln Way.

Although not comparable to wild, vicious dogs, the swans have been known to harass people who cross their paths. With a wingspan of up to eight feet, the swans can be rather daunting. Janie DeJoode, sophomore in psychology, was jogging along Lincoln Way last spring when she saw one of the swans wandering by the street. "I thought Oh God, that thing is probably mean," she said. "I figured I would scare it by running past it."

It was late in the afternoon, and the streets and sidewalks were crowded with students heading home from class. As DeJoode got closer to the swan, it spread its wings and started walking toward her.

"It was going to bite me, and its mouth was open," she said. DeJoode pushed the swan's head away from her and continued jogging. "It was really embarrassing, and everyone was laughing," she said. The swan did not follow her, and she escaped the encounter uninjured. "I don't think there have ever been any serious attacks," Crim said.

The swans are instinctively defensive of their territory, though, so they will try to scare away any intruders. Crim said although the swans are securely fenced in, they have been able to escape. Elaine seems to be the one who gets out the most, and DeJoode thinks that was what happened in her situation. "It must have been the female," she said.

The swans have not always been kept in their pen. They were allowed to freely float during Veishea '96' and Crim said the committee hoped to keep them out of the pen permanently. The swans continued to wander from their home, and the "swan crossing" signs were added near lake La Verne in the fall of 1996 to warn motorists that the swans might venture onto the road. Despite this precaution, the swans had to be returned to the pen in November of 1996 for their safety, as well as the safety of others who pass by the lake area.

However, sir Lancelot and Elaine aren't the only ones guilty of harassment. ISU students have a history of bothering the swans. "People have climbed the fence and put pink flamingos on the island," Crim said. After the Iowa-Iowa State football game last season, the swan's pen area was littered with beer cans. Students also have been known to throw sticks, stones, and even goal posts into the swan's home.

Sir Lancelot and Elaine were removed from Lake La Verne for a few days in 1996 after an April fool's day prankster dyed the lake green. Sir Lancelot and Elaine were not hurt by the prank, but were removed from the lake as a precautionary measure.

The swans are part of a state-wide project by the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) and volunteers at ISU to reintroduce trumpeter swans to Iowa. The DNR has been placing pairs of swans in Iowa wetland areas since 1993. The goal of the program is for the swans to have young, called cygnets.

The most recent Sir Lancelot and Elaine were born in June of 1995 and have not started breeding yet, which is not unusual. Normally it takes three to five years before swans will start mating, and Larson said the committee hopes the swans will mate this spring. Sir Lancelot and Elaine's clipped wings will not allow them to leave Lake La Verne, but their offspring will be free to migrate and nest on their own.

The pair are the only swans in the Iowa restoration program who are in a people-populated environment. "No one else has tried to reintroduce swans in this urban of a setting," Crim said.

White Swan History
By: Billie Wolfe

White swans! Are these the swans of Stratford on the Avon that we read about in high school English? Or is this a dream? Can they be from Swan Lake or Lohengrin? Tell me, upper classman, where does yonder grace and beauty have its beginning?