Chapter Text
December 1
Recording begins, 11:25 am.
Rustling sounds come through before it stops and it's silent for only a few seconds before loud clattering takes over.
(muttered) Shit.
More rustling followed by a long sigh out.
Hey. So. Uh. This is Louis Tomlinson, and oh my god. What am I doing starting this off like I'm leaving a voicemail when this is entirely different?
Silence, lasting approximately 28 seconds.
Alright. So in case the swans do actually succeed in killing me and I die alone in this decrepit castle in the middle of nowhere Scotland, I guess I'll explain what I'm doing this for, even though I'm only recording this for myself.
Right. God, I feel like such a bellend just sitting here talking into my phone like this when I know damn well no one is going to listen to this but me, but here we are.
Okay. So. Focus, Louis, for fuck's sake. Two weeks ago I moved up here to Loch whatever to care for the castle and the swans. Mostly the swans. The castle is just my free lodging whilst I do so. They're paying me a fortune to do this, and as I'd just lost my job without notice in September and my savings had run out… fuck, you don't need to know any of this.
So, yeah. Long story short. Local Scottish government is paying me stupidly well to care for the swans on this lake. Loch. Whatever. Guess I should call it a loch as that's what it's actually named, but it's fine. I don't know if I just skimmed the paperwork a bit too well or if I thought I had a grasp of the living situation and completely misunderstood, but I'm here. Alone. In a furnished but old and fucking freezing castle. Caring for the fucking swans that are… rare? Indigenous? I don't actually fucking know why they care so much about these swans, but they do and now I'm here taking care of the damn things.
Not only do I need to care for them, though, I'm meant to keep a log as best I can of any changes to the… flock? Is it called a flock of swans? I don't think it is, but I'll have to check on that later since if I get out of the app I'm using to record all this, it thinks I'm done and doesn't just end the recording, but it deletes it. Annoying as shit, that is. I have attempted to start this the last few days and lost all the recordings so had to go by memory when filling out the paperwork.
Which is an issue, as I'm a bit of a pothead.
Brief pause with quiet chuckles followed by a shorter, less dramatic sigh than the previous one.
So yeah, my memory is shit and I always make mental notes whilst I'm out there monitoring them and feeding them and all that good shit, but I forget a lot of it if I don't do the paperwork immediately.
And mate, the fucking paperwork is the worst part of this whole thing. Like, the swans are gorgeous and all that but they smell and they're messy and their shit gets everywhere on the castle grounds, and… anyway. I'm honestly tired of doing the paperwork twice a day just to be sure that I don't forget anything, so I figured if I just record everything I need to remember for the reports, then I can just fill them out once a week and submit them once I'm done. Boom.
The issue is…
Pause, with some quiet rustling.
I guess the issue is this just feels weird. But I'll get used to it the more I do it, right? Right.
So here we go.
There's still 30 swans, but there seems to be a disturbance. I know that the guy who introduced me to the area said that this was a rare colonial nesting situation and that none of the swans are nesting or breeding, which is how the flock has gotten so large, but it seems to me that two of them swans are starting to break apart from the rest? And that doesn't seem like something that should be happening, right? If they all live together and have done for some time, there will obviously be changes and all, but this is new with these two. They all have been just fine together until around Friday last week.
One of the swans was in a fight with another, which can happen sometimes with this lot, so I didn't think anything of it, but when I went out the next day, I noticed that the same swan that had gotten a mark on it's neck from the earlier fight was keeping it's distance with another one. Could they be pairing off and becoming territorial or something? Is that something that happens with swans?
Fuck. I know the type of swans, these are mute swans, and they are the only kind that doesn't migrate here I guess, but I maybe need to do more research. The paperwork and the guy who helped me settle in didn't mention anything about this kind of stuff, and so I didn't think I'd have to worry about it.
So, there we go. That's the biggest thing I've noticed. The food supplies are looking good and all of the swans seem healthy and happy otherwise. Just getting a bit worried about what's happening with those two.
So… I guess that's it.
Rustling sounds. End of recording.
Recording begins again, 11:49 am.
It is apparently referred to as a flock of swans, but also most commonly called a bevy, which is what that Steve guy called them before. That's why I thought flock was wrong. He always called them a bevy. They can also be called a game, a lamentation, or a wedge.
And turns out mated pairs of mute swans are incredibly fucking territorial. So. That could definitely be what's going on with these guys now, if they are mating off. And if that's the case, what does it mean for the rest of my bevy?
End of recording.