A BRITISH person of average intelligence supposedly has a vocabulary of about 10,000 words.

And yet none of those words seem quite up to the job when reacting to the news that someone took it into their head to coat a family of swans at Peatmoor Lagoon in cooking oil.

It is believed that their four cygnets are dead as a result. There is, of course, no point in hoping that the person or people responsible will have a bout of conscience and confess to what they have done. Such people have no conscience.

And of course, confession takes courage a quality which animal abusers generally lack.

There is also similarly little point in appealing for anybody who was with the attackers to come forward, as anybody who could keep such company is probably equally beyond the pale.

But one thing we, the decent people, can do is report anything we know or suspect.

And then we can only hope for whoever is responsible to be caught, punished and shunned by the entire community for as long as anybody remembers their vile act.