Commuting to work can be a stressful experience, especially if you have to travel during rush hour. The last thing you want is any further unexpected delays.

While most employers will understand and accept the odd reasonable explanation for you being late to work, such as trains being cancelled or unusually bad traffic jams, there are also some excuses that seem so unexpected they might sound far-fetched.

One man has taken to social media to share the moment his DLR train in London got unexpectedly delayed after an animal decided to make itself comfortable on the railway line.

Taking to TikTok, user @twurleywurleydrawing shared a clip from his commute when his train started slowing down unexpectedly.

The train driver was then heard making an announcement to all passengers, saying: “We currently have a swan on the line, hence why I’m going so slow.

“As soon as it’s moved out the way, we should be on the move at normal speed.”

The man behind the camera filmed out the front window of the DLR train, beyond which a swan could be seen walking just mere metres in front of the train without a care in the world about the large passenger train behind it.

The video then zoomed out slightly to show a man standing by the control panel of the train, carefully maneuvering it so as not to hurt or hit the swan.

The train is then heard using its horn in a bid to get the swan to move.

While the TikTok user did not specify what day this unexpected delay on the DLR occured, it’s not an uncommon occurance for swans to cause train delays across the UK.

Over the 12 months to March 2024, swans caused the largest number of passenger delays across Network Rail Southern region’s Wessex route. It’s become such a common problem that rail staff are even being trained to remove swans from the tracks.

After seeing the video on TikTok, several people took to the comment section as they couldn’t believe what they were seeing.

“Honestly when they announced this at bank on Monday I was like really?” one person wrote, while a second viewer said: ” if you hadn’t recorded it, I wouldn’t have believed you.”

However, the swan wasn’t the only thing that caught the eye of viewers, as some went on to ask about the train driver.

“Sombody please tell me coz now it’s bugging me. Do train drivers stand up for the whole journey?” another person asked, to which another viewer said: “No theyre not. they have a build in chair at his back. hes just standing up to look at the duck.”