A pensioner has told how she was lucky to escape with her life after a SWAN crashed through her window during a freak accident.
Jean Wilkinson, 78, was left stunned when she heard an “enormous explosion” and walked into her bathroom to find shattered glass and an injured swan on the floor.
She had only been at the sink in front of the double-glazed window just moments before and the RSPCA say she could have been seriously injured or killed.
The bizarre incident happened when the hapless bird hit the chalet home in Shamrock Lodge, Barton in Fabis, Notts., at around 8am last Monday (11/1).
Jean contacted her neighbours by messaging “I need help” on a WhatsApp group before residents rushed to her aid and called the RSPCA.
They decided to leave the swan alone until the animal charity arrived three hours later as it “seemed okay” despite being covered in blood and “clearly a bit shocked”.
Pictures show the dazed bird sitting in the middle of Jean’s bathroom with blood on the sink and broken glass across the floor.
Jean, a retired telephone operator, said: “It was last Monday and I was sitting down after I’d just been in the bathroom five minutes beforehand.
“I had been having a wash and came to sit down to have a coffee and then all of a sudden I heard an enormous explosion.
“It was the loudest explosion I have ever heard.
“I have recently had a new shower room put in and I looked around the house and I was shaking.
“I thought maybe the shower screen had exploded as I couldn’t think of anything else.
“I pushed the bathroom door open and it wouldn’t open but there was glass everywhere.
“I went back again and pushed the door open further and found there was a swan on the floor and blood everywhere and shards of glass.
“I pulled the door quickly tight. I have a WhatsApp group with my neighbours and I just messaged ‘I need help’.
“I said ‘there’s a swan that’s just come through my bathroom window’ and within minutes three or four of my neighbours were there and one had phoned the RSPCA.
“My neighbours helped me clear up and the RSPCA came in about three hours, which I thought was quite good.
“One of my neighbours actually looked in through the outside and saw the swan just sitting there very quietly with its head up.
“There was a lot of blood everywhere but it looked okay so we left it until they came.
“I think they like to be left in the quiet and it was possibly in shock – as was I.
“I live alone and it was all quite scary.”
Jean says she is used to seeing swans around her home and in the fields outside her window but had never known one to crash through a window.
She added: “I’m opposite the Attenborough nature reserve and I live in a log cabin on stilts on the River Trent so I have fields in front of me and the river at the back.
“There are always swans everywhere. But they’ve never crashed into the window and into the double glazing before.
“The chances of it happening are pretty remote as they don’t tend to normally fly that low.
“The windows are all double glazed and there’s a gap about an inch between the glass – so it is really thick glass.”
RSPCA animal rescuer Inspector Keith Ellis was sent to the scene to collect the dazed and injured female bird and it was taken for emergency veterinary treatment.
Keith said: “The lady was so lucky when this happened as she had just been in the bathroom.
“Had she still been there when this swan crashed through the window I am sure the glass shattering and the impact of the bird hitting her would have caused serious injury – or even worse.
“I think the swan was looking and flying to the nearby River Trent and must have misjudged the direction.
“It was also quite windy at the time which may have blown her off course.
“I have been an RSPCA inspector for 40 years and have never seen a swan crash through a window.
“I have seen them crash-land onto busy roads thinking they are rivers – but nothing like this – it is so bizarre.”
The swan was taken to a nearby vets where it spent over an hour in surgery having dozens of stiches.
It was then transferred to the RSPCA’s Stapeley Grange Wildlife Centre, near Nantwich, Cheshire.
The bird will be treated for her wounds and rehabilitated until she is healthy enough to be released back into the wild.
Keith added: “She was a bit dazed when I went to collect her and had lost a lot of blood but we managed to get her to the vets quickly and she spent an hour in surgery having dozens of stitches to a wound under her wing.
“She will receive further treatment at Stapeley Grange and hopefully she will soon be able to return to the wild.”
