Mystery of the Black Swan Box
They’ve lowered our Black Swan Lake 6′ in order to repair the bottom of the pool this fall. We’ve been watching the lake go down every day for a week. Six feet of vertical shallowing has caused our cove to recede about 25 feet.
A rather large area rug became exposed, after having sunk down in the mucky and very stinky lake bottom. We pulled the putrid smelling, very heavy rug out with some difficulty, spread it out to dry on the bank and threw it into our trash can.
But this curious, what looks like a large safety deposit box, slowly started to appear as the water went down. It was submerged vertically in the mud. When the lake recession ceased and the box was still about 3 feet past the water’s edge, held just out of reach by the black sludge of the lake bottom. Less than a foot of the box was above the water. What had been the shallows of the lake were now like quick sand, sucking at our shoes as we approached the box. Instead, we pulled large snags into a precarious, slippery pile for me to monkey walk on. Still not close enough, I could only reach the end of the box stuck in the mud by nudging it with my long-handled shovel. With Sarah on one side in the kayak and me balancing on a crooked snag on the other side of the box, it took the two of us about 30 minutes to wrangle and wrestle the water-heavy box to shore. The blackest, most vile-smelling water poured out of its many rusty holes.
We imagined the box might hold treasure from a bank heist gone bad. Or there had been a Black Swan robbery about a year ago of a home just up the hill from us. The robbers had been after guns in the home. The police dogs caught the bad guys in the woods a couple hundred yards west of us after they fled through our backyard. We wondered if the box found its watery fate when the desperadoes made a desperate toss of their loot from the robbery gone awry? Could there be a reward?
The mystery compelled us on. Without an easy way into the box — the lid was rusted shut — we let the muck and mire drain out of it for a couple of days before we attempted to open it.
The last couple of nights we have heard some strange knocking sounds coming from the lake shore. But we hear lots of sounds on the lake at night with all the night critters around, so we didn’t think too much of it. I’ll let the pictures tell the rest of the story…
