Wednesday, Jan. 14, 2004 - 11:29 p.m.

Gordon Edgar Drake, former Prime Minister of Smiles Park Pond, added the final ingredient into the substance that would finally show how serious he was about this unfortunate business.

Forced into a cave, deep below 'Duck Island' (as the signpost read), by the marauding swans, Gordon had been forced to watch helplessly as the once proud duck nation was swept aside. The bread thrown by elderly featherlesses now fell to the swans, and their associates the geese. He would throw down this hideous uprising. The ducks would once more rule the pond!

"It is time," Gordon had quacked, "for the ducks to return to their rightful place! It is time for the ducks to live as equals to, if not RULERS OF... the swans! It is time for them to die!"

Nobody had heard Gordon's raging rant of fury, because he was underground. A duck's quack doesn't echo through tunnels. It doesn't echo at all. Nobody heard of the injustices, they just happened. The swans, up on the surface of the pond, were running the pond not as inhabitants, but as KINGS!

The head swan had an interesting view on life. "The ducks are the cause of ALL our problems! They take the bread we need - the featherless favour them! They take our nesting grounds! They defecate on all the paths! If we kill them all, then we will be happy!" The other swans had agreed, and the geese had been drafted in, whether they liked it or not, as the military arm of the Swan Uprising. The pay was good, and they needed that.

It had started with Gordon, the Prime Minister of the pond, being removed to a place where he could never tell of the swan's plans. Without a legitimate leader, the ducks (and to a lesser degree, the coots), had no direction. After the Big Bread Shortage of the previous year, the ducks were happy when the swans flew in with their solve-all ideas.

Within a month, the ducks were confined to Duck Island, occasionally let out to gather bread for their masters. If any ducks stepped out of line, the Goose Militia pecked them back into place, or just killed them. It didn't matter, as the Head Swan had once said "ducks are plentiful, we can afford to make fatal examples of some without drastically decreasing our workforce!"

The ducks weren't happy, but they could do nothing. Little Billy Pecker had been killed for sneaking a little bread home for his mother. The ducks were scared.

Gordon had the perfect solution though. In his egg shaped box, he had created something to get rid of ALL the problems of the pond. He had made POISON! He'd watched what the featherless did to rats, and had tainted some bread with the same substance. Gosling Carrot, who was three years old, and worked for the swans because he had to (the swans had imprisoned his siblings), took the bread, and had died within seconds. Gordon was overjoyed with his success. "I now have the means to succeed!" he quacked, though again, nobody heard.

A week after his successful test, Gordon navigated the tunnels to the surface, and quacked out a warning to the ducks, in the duck language. He then released his substance into the pond, and went back down into the tunnels. Only one duck had been awake, but he was too frightened of swan punishment to do anything.

By the next morning, everything that had lived in the pond was gone, apart from Gordon. The ducks and geese got up earliest, so they were the first in the water. They were the ones who died. The swans had seen this and flown away, to find new ponds to take over. The swans lived in luxury for many years after that, and Gordon had put right an injustice, in a way.