Welcome Back Rambo & Rambette

Welcome to spring in Southlake! I know we are all very tired of the rain, but one sure sign of the changing season was the arrival last week of our resident swans, Rambo and Rambette. I didn’t know the story of these swans until a few years ago, so I thought this would be a good time to share what I learned with you.

The swan we know as Rambo was hatched in LA (Lower Alabama) in 1990, and what little we know of his early life is cobbled together from various hints he has left with Southlake lakeside residents. We know his mother died when he was very young, and that he grew learning how to work with ducks and geese on his father’s farm. His father was abusive and threatened young Rambo's life. The two nearly killed each other on one occasion. His family ties meant that he also spent time with relatives in Florida, which is where he learned to defend himself and those with him against aggressive Canadian Geese with such skill.

Rambo's ongoing problems at home, which ultimately led him to disconnecting from his father. All this was pushed behind him when he decided to fly north one spring. After days of searching, he found a new home at a lake in the Riverchase neighborhood of Hoover, where he would come to learn his greatest talent might be as a natural warrior against those aggressive Canadian Geese who had taken over all the lakes in Hoover.

Rambo's initial service at Riverchase was actually only a small taste of what was coming for him. He spent two summers at Riverchase before returning to LA to begin the kind of training that would ultimately make him a legend. Rambo underwent extensive combat and survival training, learned to speak the many fowl languages of Central Alabama, and he became proficient in ramming and winged combat. He was sent back to Hoover as part of Baker Team, an eight-swan group of the Special Forces who specialized in classified missions.

Rambo continued working in deep cover and reconnaissance missions, with some additional training, until he was captured by a group of Riverchase geese after an ambush and became a POW. For the next several months, he watched as his captors tortured his comrades from Baker Team, as he was tortured himself via hard labor and sleep deprivation. Fortunately, Rambo managed to escape the POW camp. He returned to LA, but the deep trauma he'd suffered began to show through in the form of a nervous breakdown.

When he returned to Riverchase, he found it to be less than hospitable to veterans, and he spent years struggling as his post-traumatic stress disorder from the war went untreated.

Rambo moved on, and flew to the nearby neighborhood of Southlake, where the local geese chased him away. Rambo, who was just looking for something to eat, went back to Southlake anyway where the geese began harassing him, his swan companions and the local ducks causing him to have flashbacks to his time as a prisoner of war. And then suddenly, the swan just snapped, going into LA mode. Using his head ramming skills, Rambo fought back against the geese and in the process found friendly lake-side residents in Southlake who immediately named him Rambo.

Southlake was the family that Rambo was looking for. The other swans and the ducks appreciated the protection Rambo provided and the lake-side residents always provided food and a place to nest when he needed it.

A softy at heart, Rambo discovered a female Swan (that lake-side residents started calling Rambette) that had also been abused by the geese. Today Rambo and Rambette are a couple. They still return to LA during the winter but each March (about this time) they return to Southlake to continue enjoying and protecting the home waters that have adopted them.