Florida couple Andrew Marshall and PJ Garcia Marshall opened their hearts, and sometimes their home, to a swan named Lola.
“She’s grown to love being in the house. She thinks she’s one of the dogs or cats,” Garcia Marshall said. He told Click Orlando.
“To say she has completely changed our lives would be an understatement.”
The Orlando couple argued that it was illegal to remove the swans from the water, so they transformed their backyard into what they call “Lola’s Cove,” complete with a walkway to a nearby lake to protect the swans from other animals in the area.
“We essentially created a sanctuary for her,” Marshall explained to the outlet.
The Marshalls, who have experience in rehabilitating animals, were introduced to Laura one day after receiving a call about a baby cygnet.
“She was found alone in the nest. Can you imagine what it would be like to get a call that a baby has hatched from an egg and is alone, with no mother or siblings? That call touched our hearts immediately,” Garcia Marcial told the outlet.
The Marshalls had intended to release Lola back into the wild, but when they brought her back to the lake where she was found, she was attacked by another swan.
“Unfortunately, she didn’t grow up near the lake so she didn’t know how to judge where it was OK to go and where it was not OK to go,” Marshall told Click Orlando.
“she, [another swan] They were attacked because they had a territory in that area.”
They decided to keep her and now consider Lola a part of the family.
“She’s adapting,” Garcia-Marshall said.
“And I think she’s decided that we’re her family just as much as we’ve decided that she’s our family.”
