ORCM has issued a water-safety advisory for Brindle Lake in the southern Rolling Downs, effective immediately. The advisory was issued following what the office calls a “sudden and unexplained” rise in injuries caused by kelpies.

The creatures were long regarded across the Downs not as a danger but as a rare and gentle privilege, glimpsed once in a lifetime by the quiet and the lucky, yet ORCM confirms at least eleven people have been hurt at the lake in the past fortnight, several seriously, with deep bites, crushing bruises consistent with being pulled by a large animal, and three near-drownings from which bystanders recovered the victim; one flood-relief volunteer remains under care at Grove Hospital with a broken arm, and one death has been reported.

The office identified the dead as Posy Hartwell, a Downs family columnist for this newspaper, who by early accounts had brought her children to count tadpoles below the Brindle footbridge, the very outing she once recommended in these pages. She is survived by three children.

“Every account we have taken describes a kelpie,” an ORCM coordinator told the Chronicle. “The behavior is new, it is happening in daylight, and it is happening to people who did nothing to provoke it. Until we understand it, we need everyone well back from that water.”

Until further notice the office asks residents of the southern basin to keep at least thirty feet from the waterline and clear of all reed beds, to stay out of the shallows for any reason. Please report any sighting or incident to the ORCM waystation at once.

Asked whether the change might be connected to other disturbances reported this season across the Downs and the Groves, the coordinator said only that the office “does not trade in that kind of talk”; the advisory will be reviewed in seven days.