Once upon a time...

There was a duck.  A very happy duck.  It ducked around everything and therefore got a reputation of being a rather ducky dodger.  Despite this, it still enjoyed the finer things of life: mainly ducking.  And sometimes yodeling. 

So our yodeling duck sets out one day to find out what happened to his set of collectable marbles.  The duck had a hunch that his evil nemesis Meerkat Steffan had stolen his collectable marbles.  (I suppose Meerkat Steffan thought they were very collectable).  So the duck went out to beard Meerkat Steffan in his lair.  (the bearding required the used of a small shovel, some chloroform, a fake beard, and lots of glue).  Unfortunately, after bearding Meerkat Steffan, the duck still couldn't find his set of collectable marbles.  He then thought it best to make a quick escape before the chloroform wore off.

Wandering dejected around the fjords of Norway, the duck decided that the only thing to do would be to join the French foreign legion in order that he could travel the world and find out what happened to his set of collectable marbles. 

Ironically, it was only after he joined up that he realized he was carrying the marbles in his pocket.  Imagine his consternation...

I said imagine it!

Good.

So now our consternated duck had to form a plan to escape the French foreign legion without getting shot as a deserter.  (the commanding officer had a thing for duck a'lorange.  He also had a thing about the men nicking his desserts and then running off with them to eat in secret.  He was a very paranoid man)

Fortunately, the foreign legion were staying in the shadow of a great mountain topped with lots of snow, and this provided the perfect opportunity for our entrepreneurial duck.  He managed to get picket duty high on the slopes of the mountain (sadly he had to trade away three of his collectable marbles to do this) whereupon he began to yodel.  He yodeled high, he yodeled low, and he even yodeled in middle C.  But the mountain refused to drop its load of snow.  The other soldiers were starting to notice something off, however, and the duck knew he didn't have a lot of time. 

So he pulled out his weapon of last resort: the mating cry of the double nosed flat-footed Archip.  (a sound so powerful, so shiver-inducing, so horrifying, that the double nosed flat-footed Archips went completely deaf as a survival mechanism)

Plugging his own ears with the remainder of his marble collection, the duck let loose the mating cry.  The mountain shivered on its base, the soldiers cried out in horrified agony, and the snow on top of the mountain was so terrified that it sublimated straight into a gas.  Although the duck had been hoping for an avalanche, the copious amount of fog suited him just fine and he strolled away back home.  (only after finding his three marbles that he had bribed another soldier with and taking them back while the man was still in shock).

The end


This completely spontaneous story was brought to you by the Society for the Preservation of Archips.