Day 2,407

It fell from the roof and lay there all night just wheezing and coughing up fluids. Lord only knows how the damned thing got up there to begin with but if we don't finish it off before it dies it'll start to attract others and we'll have a swarm of them before you can say "poor little thing".

I hear they travel in packs further up north, something in the colder air agrees with them and those long dark nights make it easier for them to cover entire villages in one fell swoop. Happened to Lesser Shepsett just the other week you know - all three hundred gone and eighteen well-fed nests strewn about in their place.

I've been trying to persuade the other half to go out there but he isn't having any of it, says that it'll die soon enough but he's got the telly on so bloody loud I can't hear how close the rest of them are. There will be more of them further out, waiting for this scout to come home and they will come looking sooner or later.

Honestly I wouldn't mind them so much if they lived off other beings like caterpillars or fish or something. Fact is they need blood, specifically their nests do and so they wire humans directly into the nest's roots until we're drained dry. There's something different in our blood, some specific tiny components that they need in order for the nest to flourish and nothing else will do.

So one of them slowly dying, probably crying out for help in between the wheezing and coughing up fluids, right outside our front door will not end well for us unless it dies before the rest can pinpoint its location. And as his lordship refuses to lift a single finger while his shows are on, it'll be up to me to grab the shovel and shut it up for good.

I've always hated this part, where they peer up at you with those big childlike eyes and they start to form words. Best thing to do is check for others and if the coast is clear just bring the shovel down as hard and fast as possible, preferably beheading it but I can never quite manage that.

Still, once it's good and dead I'll probably shove it in a rubbish bag and toss it into the river like the last few. There's a few villages downstream that we haven't heard from in a while but that could be for any number of reasons like the weather or they're all busy.

I keep telling myself that one more body won't hurt... maybe one day I'll start to believe it.