Vienna's Swallows

In a story by Oscar Wilde, the statue of the Happy Prince was weeping for the poor. A swallow, pitying the Happy Prince, obligingly carried to the poor the ruby from the statue's sword, the sapphires from the eyes, the gold leaf that clothed all. In doing this, the swallow stayed north too long. Winter came and the swallow died of cold. The Prince's heart cracked. The Town Councillors, squabbling over the Prince's metal body. threw the heart and the small dead bird on an ash heap from which an angel carried them to heaven.

Unlike Oscar Wilde's greedy councillors, citizens of Vienna grieved one chilly day last week for dead and dying swallows. If the swallows were too weak to fly over the snowy Alps, Vienna would help them. Children and adults collected hapless birds, assembled them in wooden crates. Airplanes carried the crated swallows, thousands of them, to warm Venice, where they were fed and freed.

Another good turn the Viennese planes did the swallows: if the birds had crossed into northern Italy alone, they would have encountered nets spread between trees by Italian peasants who, like French peasants, consider swallows fine eating.

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