ursula-vernon:

Filed under “Probably Benign But That Isn’t To Say It Couldn’t Kill Us All Horribly In Our Sleep Someday.” Transcript of post-it notes, memos, and one memorable in-office
discussion provided by Intern Brittany, who does not get paid for this,
by the way, and yes, I know the economy has more or less collapsed to a
barter system but an IOU would be nice from time to time, maybe?

Sid, explain this!

Right, so it’s just this set of arches
hanging out in the middle of the field. And according to this old-timer
who lives nearby, this was built by a bricklayer who’s wife died, and he
built a portal to the next world to try to see her again. Except his
wife–the old-timer’s, not the bricklayer–said that the bricklayer
never married and hated people and was trying to build a portal to get
away from seeing anybody ever again. Anyway, the point is it didn’t
really work very well. – Sid

About the ducks….

I mean, you can walk right through it. It doesn’t go anywhere. Nothing happens unless you’re a duck. – Sid

You walked through it?

I was bored and it was hot. Also, not a duck. – Sid

With the understanding that I already regret asking, what about the ducks?

Ducks vanish. But then they come back, sort of. – Sid

Sort of, you say.

Well, they don’t have organs. – Sid

So the ducks come back dead?

No,
that’s the alarming thing. The ducks eventually show up again and
they’re just sort of solid all the way through. They act normal. I mean,
insomuch as ducks act like anything. Ducks are just kinda ducks. But
they don’t speak in tongues or anything. Marla is totally weirded out. –
Sid

I assume you dissected a duck to find this out.

Sort of. – Sid.

Oh Jesus.

We
were standing there looking at it and a bunch of ducks suddenly came
out of the opening and Marla panicked and hit one with a tennis racket. –
Sid

This is not proper scientific protocol.

It was what we had. – Sid

In
the interests of not having my blood pressure rise any further, we will
assume that you had a perfectly good reason for carrying a tennis
racket, which you do not need to explain. Ever. So she hit the duck with
a tennis racket.

Right, and then we had this dead duck and
the guy we had been talking to was all “Are you gonna eat that?” and
Marla was all “Don’t eat things that appear out of thin air.” – Sid

Sound advice. Yes. Good for Marla.

So anyway we looked at the duck, and it was not from around here if you know what I mean. – Sid

How so?

Well, it had extra wiggly bits under the wings. – Sid

Wiggly bits. Of course it did.

But it was mostly a duck. Anyway, you know how Marla is about things with wiggly bits, so she ran over it with the truck. – Sid

Marla never liked the wiggly ones.

And
that’s when we found out that the whole duck was basically made of…I
dunno, Spam or something. Undifferentiated pink stuff. I wanted to put
some in a jar to bring home, but Marla was all “burn it with fire, we
have to burn it all” and you know how she gets. Also, she had the keys
to the truck. – Sid

Good woman. Yes.

report filed June, 15 PD also by Brittany.