British police are finally being taught how to handle swans after years of officers faking it until they make it and starring in numerous hilarious viral videos.
Swans in the UK are notoriously feisty and often come into conflict with police officers. Naturally, hilarity ensues, and such scenes have inspired numerous memes and a memorable scene from Hot Fuzz, starring Simon Pegg and Nick Frost.
But in a bid to tackle the beasts, literally in this case, police from Gloucestershire constabulary were sent off for some swan training. They spent the day being shown how to pick up the animals and handle them without issue.
Stroud Police also did their training at WWT Slimbridge and tweeted: ''Rural crime officers attended a #SwanHandling course this week at @wwtslimbridge,
https://twitter.com/StroudPolice/status/1550228490993164289
''So if we get called to incidents of #swans in the road we can handle them correctly ?@CotswoldsPolice @forestpolice @glospol_rural #RuralCrime'."
This week, the annual River Thames swan count begins, a tradition that has been running for 800 years. Each year, the Royal Swan Marker and their team capture and record various information about the Queen's swans.
They usually capture the cygnets and take them ashore to measure, weigh and then tag them. The same is done to adult swans, though the task is obviously more difficult given their size.
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