A love story for the industrial age, indeed.
Because who says swans don't have feelings? And who says that love has to make sense? Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, no love too great nor too small, love and beauty comes in all shapes and sizes, and all that jazz. You go, swan.
A swan in Germany has apparently bonded big time with a blue tractor and in his infatuated state, follows the big blue beast everywhere it goes. He can't get enough of it. And they've been together a long time, too – several years in fact, according to residents of the northwestern town where Schwani (yes someone actually named him that) and Big Blue (no one's actually named it that) spend their days together outside a stately hotel in northwestern Germany.
Video shows hotelier Herman Josef Hericks explaining to CBS News reporter how Schwani follows him and the tractor everywhere around the neatly manicured landscape of the hotel, no matter where he goes. When he takes a break from driving the tractor around, the swan can't get to the tractor fast enough to stand by the open door and gaze lovingly into it, as if ready to get in.
Apparently swan experts don't really know why the 8-year-old swan and the tractor, whose age is unknown (never ask machinery how old it is – it'll never answer you), are so in love with each other or how they first met. Neither family was available for comment on the improbable love affair, probably because the unusual coupling was frowned upon by both families.
We think it doesn't really matter, just as long as they are happy together.