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Instead of disrupting the ecosystem or having to deal with taking some "new pets" home, you decide to spend more time <span class="mu-s">observing</span> your new charges instead. The little scuttling crabs and lobster-fish; kindly giving you all the boring observations you could possibly need for your new scouting project. Of course, this takes time, which is one things kids have a lot of, but also patience, which kids have very little of.
Every day, you see kids rushing out to the shores and shoals to play in the water, to explore, and to have the freedom you also crave. But yet you're stuck here, watching stupid little crustaceans. Your <span class="mu-i">friends</span>, Maximilian, Reginald, Nathanial, Jason... even Constance. They're scouts too, mostly, but none seemed to take it as serious as you. You can't blame them really, because watching these animals is just... boring.
You get some revenge in your mind with misanthropic thoughts. How foolish of them to play and laugh in the sun-lit waters! Don't they know that this will likely be the last summer, maybe one or two more at most, they'll get to splash around like this? Soon the young "schools" of fish will have to start taking their real "school" more seriously soon. Soon, the biological impetus of mating will begin for your species, in which case boys and girls are separate and chaperoned to prevent a mating bond forming where it shouldn't. People will be expected to take on their family businesses or seek high positions in society and wealth; to care for their own future offspring and their elders. Of course, this is your own future too, but you put off thinking about it. Life as a Swall sure does seem rough from your perspective. It's all school and studying, work, marriage time, repayment of the society that brought you up, and then elderly life; where you pay the price if you didn't make a strong enough family or get rich enough to beat back poverty and humiliation. Work work work. You wonder, bleakly, if the Scouts are some attempt by your society to steal away the precious few years of fun you get as a child; and you agreed to it with <span class="mu-i">enthusiasm</span>.
