Documents filed at the Reed-Bed Clerk’s office on Wednesday morning indicate that one Drake Halford — long resident on the east shore, and known to this paper these seven seasons — has formally contested the most recent reed-bed census on the grounds that his household of seven has been listed as a household of three, “and of the wrong three besides.”
Drake Halford, interviewed at the bank shortly after filing, expressed cautious optimism that the matter would be resolved within the quarter. Asked what redress he sought, he responded that, at minimum, he expected to be listed as himself. He also requested, separately and with some feeling, that the three persons currently occupying his position under the census be formally struck from the rolls, preferably before they became aware of the mistake and began to make claims upon it. “I know two of them,” he added, darkly. “I do not wish to know the third.”
The three names at present appearing under the Halford heading — which this paper has, after some deliberation, elected not to print in full — comprise one drake of uncertain provenance, one coot formally struck from the last two censuses for reasons now disputed, and one entry listed simply as “et al.” This last, the Clerk conceded on application, “should not, in strictness, appear at all on a line of this kind.”
The Clerk, pressed for the whereabouts of the relevant paperwork, initially maintained that the original filing had been placed “somewhere sensible” and would be located presently. By midday, the Clerk had revised this assessment to “somewhere damp” and requested an adjournment. By late afternoon, the Clerk was no longer using the word somewhere and had instead taken to referring to the file as “the matter,” which our correspondent understands to indicate a further decline in the state of its whereabouts.
Sources close to the Subcommittee report that the document may have been consumed by a passing heron, though the heron has declined to confirm. A third party, approached for the heron’s account, reported that the heron had indicated, by means of a slow blink and a pointed movement of the head, that “it could not be expected to remember every slip of paper that happened to find its way past.” The third party — a frog who has requested not to be named, on the grounds that he has his own paperwork pending — considers this a denial in substance if not in form.
Reactions at the east shore have been mixed. The household immediately adjoining the Halfords, long in dispute with them over the placement of a particular reed, described the confusion as “regrettable, if overdue.” A further household, unrelated, offered its sympathies along with a small gift of pondweed, which Drake Halford received with dignity and later returned on the grounds that it, too, had been misfiled. Our correspondent was unable to establish whether this was a joke.
The present matter is not without precedent. Older readers will recall the great census of four seasons past, in which an entire household on the north bank was listed as residing on the south, and remained so listed for the full term of the census, despite the household’s repeated and increasingly pointed objections. The Subcommittee eventually resolved the matter by declaring both listings valid simultaneously, a solution this paper described at the time as “ingenious, if geometrically implausible.”
Drake Halford has indicated that he will, if pressed, accept a similar remedy — provided, he stressed, “that the other three are listed first on the fictional side.” The Subcommittee has taken the request under advisement, with the Clerk noting, in an aside, that “advisement is, at present, the Subcommittee’s principal activity.”
A fresh census is not currently contemplated. HONK, added the Drake, quietly, at the close of the interview.
Filed under protest.