Sworn Affidavit
Sworn statement of Brenda, retired heron, filed to formally recant her own earlier loitering report. The witness testified from the reeds, at a respectful and legally-mandated distance from the other witnesses.
Let me be clear about what I am. I am a heron. I eat frogs. It's not personal, it's breakfast. In forty years on this marsh I have eaten a great many frogs and regretted exactly none of them. So when I tell you I filed a loitering report on PeePoo, understand that I filed it the way I file everything: fast, hungry, and without reading the pad twice.
But I have had time to reflect, and reflection is the enemy of a good appetite. The frog I reported for 'suspicious lily-pad loitering' was not loitering. He was sitting very still because he'd found a beetle on its back and was waiting to see if it could right itself before he decided whether to help. It righted itself. He cheered. Quietly. To himself. I have never in my career watched a frog cheer for a beetle. It put me right off my dinner.
I have since stapled a handwritten retraction to the back of my original report. It reads, in full: 'I would never eat PeePoo. He's too pure. Eat his brother instead. I'll pay.' I stand by every word. The brother — the one across the pond, the one I'm told I mustn't name — now there is a frog with the right amount of guilt in him to season a meal. Same face. Completely different flavor. A predator knows.
So strike my loitering report. It's the only witness statement in this whole file that got worse for the prosecution the longer I looked at it. I came here to eat a frog and I'm leaving having sworn to protect one. That's not a thing that happens to a heron twice.