Have you been shopping lately? The price of rubber ducks is outrageous. While remodeling my bathroom, I paid over 1,000 yen for a mother duck and three chicks for my bathtub. And they were pink! I think someone's been tampering with the rubber duckie formula because within minutes of tubbing with these pink yuckie duckies, they were belly up. I don't think this is a good example for children who may be led to believe that all ducks die in bathtubs. Not true. As a matter of fact, more ducks die on dinner plates.

I think ducks are good role models for children because ducks have a PG rating. We all know that ducks don't have sex. They fertilize. I think this is a good idea. If humans could do this, we could eliminate a lot of problems. Teenage fertilization would be much easier to deal with than teenage pregnancy, and the closest thing to evidence in a sexual harassment lawsuit would be: Your Honor, he was gazing at my eggs! The females are naturally feminist ducks because they can decide whether to let a male fertilize the eggs or not. That's truly prochoice. I also admire ducks because they don't sweat, and they're waterproof.

We used to have ducks here on Shiraishi Island. Every now and then, we'd awake to a squawking duck paddling around the port outside our window. If a duck ventured from the pond over to the sea, he often couldn't remember how to get back and would squawk until someone helped him.