Documents were lodged at the Reed-Bed Clerk’s office on Thursday morning, filed at first light by a member of the fishing party of mallards. Readers will recall the party as the one that lodged the heron sighting of the second. The filing indicates that a floating object of indeterminate character was seen at the upper bend around the seventh honk on Wednesday evening. It stayed visible from the upper-bend shallows, the party report, until the light failed. The party brought the matter in themselves. They asked, with the politeness their earlier filing had taught everyone to expect, that the observation be recorded in terms no one would confuse, the Subcommittee or the regular reader, with the matter of the twenty-eighth of April.
It is the second object of its kind to reach the gazette this season. The first was the section of waterlogged sycamore branch that the Warden, inspecting at the north shore, concluded to be a piece of branch which had been in the water and was now on the shore. That one was settled with the appropriate equanimity. The present object is in several respects of similar appearance. It runs about the length of a small drake, of a colour the party call “dark, by present water,” and floats in a way that suggests a long soaking. In one respect it is distinguished from its predecessor, and from any prior floating object on record, and on this the party are at pains to insist.
The distinguishing feature is a small piece of pondweed, of the variety common at the upper-bend shallows, wrapped around the object. The party, after talking it over among themselves and a short inspection from a respectful distance, have called the wrapping deliberate. The senior member was asked to say more. The pondweed, he observed, had not been draped, in the manner of weed that settles where the current leaves it. It had been secured, in a fashion he and his colleagues had not before had occasion to see on anything the upper bend has produced. He offered the remark with the care of a party that has, on a previous occasion, watched a matter of consequence resolve into a small question of arboreal hydrology, and that does not wish, having filed, to be taken as committed to any one reading.
The Subcommittee has been notified. The Clerk, on receiving the filing, said the matter would go under the customary heading and that the Subcommittee would, at its next session, weigh whether any further inspection was warranted. The Warden, asked for a view, was not available at the time of filing. The Deputy, asked whether she wished to comment, said her remarks would be confined to such observations as a conditions report might in due course require, and that she had as yet had no occasion to visit the upper bend. The fishing party have undertaken, conditions allowing, to stay near the object until the matter is, in the Clerk’s phrasing, “resolved or otherwise disposed of.”
At the time of filing the object was still at the upper bend. The pondweed was still secured. The party were still, in their senior member’s words, available for further questions on the customary terms. This paper notes it as it has learned to note matters of the kind. It does so with the appropriate restraint, the appropriate respect for the party’s local knowledge, and no rush to read into the thing more than the thing yet asks. What the upper bend has on its water this week is one object, dark and saturated, with a piece of weed secured around it. The gazette will say that much, and for now no more.