They can break your arm

[mcilwaine]

I am of course talking about Swans. Everybody knows they can break your arm but does anybody have evidence, anecdotal or other, of a Swan actually inflicting such a blow?

[darry]

If you fall on a swan from a reasonable height, you can break a lot more than your arm.

[partylikearockstar]

Pah. Lions and rhinoes can break your arm. I can break your arm. You don't hear us shouting about it, apart from this one time.

[sjjames]

Jun 5, 2009 12:56:58 GMT 1 darry said:

If you fall on a swan from a reasonable height, you can break a lot more than your arm.

A cautionary tale:
www.simonjjames.com/?p=21

[Jon]

That's some nice, fully relevant work, Mr James.

I don't want to piss hot bloody piss on everybody here, but I'm fairly certain it's geese that break your arms. I have a vivid, possibly entirely false memory of being a small child, and sitting in a school hall being taught about how geese can break your arms. I even remember a slide we were shown, but it was just of a man in a truck, reaching his arm down out of the truck window towards a goose.

Looking at it written down, that really seems like something that can't have happened. The only way to settle this is to smash a goose and a swan together and see which one dies the most.

[darry]

Geese bite you.

[helen]

Geese can't break arms you frickin' idiot. To be fair swans can only break the arms of people with frail crispy arms like the elderly and the very young. It's all a lot of hype really. Saying that I still wouldn't fight a swan.

[darry]

If I may, I'd like to slightly alter your post to reflect my own attitude:

Saying that I still wouldn't fight a swan, unarmed.

[mcilwaine]

Speaking of geese, I saw an Egyptian goose last weekend. So that was nice.

So who's responsible for this whole "swans can break your arm" fallacy? Some kind of shady organisation whose objectives are to big swans up into some kind of formidable warrior creature I reckon.

Either that or I'm completely mistaken and this whole thread has been a pointless waste of everybody's time in which case I apologise unreservedly.

[helen]

It was probably a rumour disseminated by the Queen to dissuade people from close contact with swans after thousands of people who'd just seen Swan Lake swarmed en masse to rivers and lakes across the country and tried having sex with swans in case they were princesses in disguise and a small proportion of these attempts were in fact successful, leading to a new breed of swan people (or sweople) who had to be imprisoned (at great cost to the Royal purse) in underground vaults to prevent the controversy that would necessarily ensue.

You might think that having sex with a human princess magically disguised as a swan would in fact lead to a human baby, but if you have sex with her when she's in swan form there's a melding of genes that wouldn't otherwise occur and the hideous, honking, and very angry swerson is born.

[pixietubs]

Probably.

[sjjames]

Swans are the aristocratic gangsters of the bird world and the geese their stooges. When you borrow money from a swan, they send round the geese to teach you a lesson. Invariably it's armbreaking, as they're simply by viciously effective.

[mcilwaine]

helen Is that what swan lake is about then? The whole having sex with a swan that's actually a princess?

Everyday is a school day and today you're the teacher for me.

[helen]

Yes, that is correct.

[sjjames]

Jun 8, 2009 21:30:51 GMT 1 mcilwaine said:

helen Is that what swan lake is about then? The whole having sex with a swan that's actually a princess?

That's some elegant sex, princesses and swans, throw in a gazelle and it would be practically aristobestial.

[partylikearockstar]

Aristobestiasexual. They're the new popular music sensation down at the box social.

I've been thinking about it. I don't think I could break someone's arm. If I did it would just be one of those wussy breaks. You know the ones, the ones where the joint has just been manipulated the wrong way. An actual broken bone would require quite a lot of patience and strength I'd imagine.

[sjjames]

Jun 11, 2009 14:18:30 GMT 1 partylikearockstar said:

I've been thinking about it. I don't think I could break someone's arm. If I did it would just be one of those wussy breaks. You know the ones, the ones where the joint has just been manipulated the wrong way. An actual broken bone would require quite a lot of patience and strength I'd imagine.

Why do want to break someone's arm? Are you a swan?

[partylikearockstar]

Nah, I was just giving credit where credits due, entirely in my mind. I mean, "swans can break your arm" is just one of those throwaway statements you don't really think about, right? But you SHOULD think about it. I mean: your freaking arm. And swans don't even have hands or boots or the skill required to hold a hammer. They only have a beak. They literally break people's arms with their mouths! It's such a thing.

[Anthony]

Right, I didn't want to start a new topic for this, but this part of the board is now dedicated to Michael Jackson and the work he did for Pepsi Cola, because he loved animals so very much. Now, let's never mention it again.

[darry]

Bubbles is still alive, I read in one of the London papers. He lives in a zoo. His trainer has apparently taught him to moonwalk.