A Plague of Yellow Plastic Ducks

Inspiration

A Plague of Yellow Plastic Ducks was originally written for Round Eight of the 2008 Whittaker Prize. The prompt used was the phrase on Friday, a duck fell from the sky. It was given a score of 76/100 by the judge, Rachel Green, putting it in ninth equal place out of 15.

Publications

A Plague of Yellow Plastic Ducks was published in the Spring 2009 edition of the Abacot Journal.

Notes

This story is most obviously influenced by the tale of the Friendly Floatees, which had somehow buried itself in my subconscious without me realising until I Googled it just now. However, another major influence for the story (and indeed its title) is the work of the anthropologist Nigel Barley. His account of taking his pet monkey into a cinema is absolutely priceless, by the way. I suspect that the ending of the book Life of Pi may also had some bearing on the ending of this story too, if the truth were told.