FLAM SOMETHING

			   "Duck Pond"
                           by oregano

    There is a pond where all ducks come to die. The pond is not
far away, or particularly big, or very scenic, but it is there in
the woods.  When a duck knows it is time, when the duck knows
that its life is over it flies off, to the pond, and takes a
drink of the bittersweet waters. The duck then swims out in the
pond where it makes its last display of life and then goes under
the waves and sinks gently to the bottom.  There the duck gets
encased in mud, with all the millions of other ducks which have
come before it and lays forever, part of nature.
   A child's story we need to tell before this story may continue
apace. This child grew up sad. This child lived in the forest in
a cabin with angry parents. The angry parents would not let the
child have any friends. The angry parents would not let the child
have any pets. But the child did have a friend, a duck that would
alite upon the child's shoulder when the child was out picking
berries for the night's stew.
   One day the duck was old and could hardly fly and knew it must
fly off to the pond where all ducks wind up, where all ducks die.
The duck wanted to say farwell to the child who had been its
friend for so long, but could only let out long lamentatious
quacks. The child did not understand and when the duck flew off
it flew in a direction other than its nest.
  The child was sad when the duck did not show up the next day or
the next and finally decided to go off in the direction the duck
last went.
   Tramping through the woods, the child would now and then see a
duck heading in the same direction. The child thought that
perhaps there was a gathering of ducks, a duck convention. The
child grew scared as he went on. More and more ducks and the
child thought for sure that the ducks were conspiring against
mankind and he decided that his friend duck was really a spy for
the Duck Liberation Movement. So the child ran back home as fast
as he could and from then on he was just like his parents and
when he grew up he was just as mean to his kids as his parents
were to him. Plus he used a lot of alcohol.  The End.

