Two fish were seen beneath the west pier on Tuesday morning. Two. Not one, as on the seventh, when the single sighting was covered here in full and the family of dabchicks of the west pier addressed it in their letter of the eighth, assuring everyone they were not in the least put out. This time, two, in quick succession. The first broke the surface just after the second honk. The second came no more than forty breaths behind it.
By every account the first was the same small silver fish reported on the seventh, or near enough: the same size, colour, and disposition, making one circuit of the pier’s leeward side before slipping off toward the southern waters. The second arrived while the first was still being written up. It was smaller and less silver. The long-resident frog passed on his way to an appointment he did not explain. He gave it a look and called it “of a different sort entirely.” He offered no other identification. Two fish at the pier, he said, was not without precedent in the longer memory of the pond, and he went on his way.
The witnesses were this paper, the frog (briefly), two drakes of the north bank (one had been here on the seventh and vouched for the first fish), and the eldest of the family of dabchicks. She stood at the pier’s seaward end and did not, across the whole interval, change her position or her face. The rest of the family held stations along the pier in a stillness best called composed.
The family’s formal response came about an hour later, through the eldest, who crossed to the bank at a distance she seemed to have measured in advance and read out the following, reproduced in full:
The family of dabchicks of the west pier acknowledges the observation of two fish beneath the pier on Tuesday morning. The family is not unsettled.
This paper waited for more. There was no more. Seven words past the salutation, it is the shortest formal communication the family has issued this season, and the count was checked twice. Whether the brevity is confidence, fatigue, or a refinement of the family’s long position on the question of being unsettled, no guess will be offered.
The heron came up not at all. It has not been seen at the pier since the second of May, when a bird answering its description turned up at the upper bend, and no one raised it on Tuesday. The Subcommittee is expected to revisit whether the heron matter is now “closed (provisionally)” at its next session. Whether a second fish helps that question or muddies it is not yet clear. One fish was an event. Two is a pattern, or it is two fish.