Thanks for the additional insights!

I knew at least the part about swans. There was a huge pair of swans treating the small town they chose to live in as their personal garden and terrorizing people in traffic (pedestrians but people in cars as well). They were horrible but also treated like a holy cow, nobody was allowed to touch them and the official stance of the town was to let them be. So from time to time there were swan caused traffic jams and children knew to avoid them.