Duck Soufflé

They called her Ducky, but no one knew why. So one day, she told them a story.

“About a decade back, I got a job working as a line cook at Blue, the swankiest restaurant in town. I was elated, even though I was in the lowest of low positions. Even as I chopped onions, I plastered a giant smile on my face. Nothing could stop me.

“Now I’m not sure if you know this little nugget of trivia, but Blue is most famous for its duck soufflé. You’d mix up the chunks of duck meat with the batter, beat it until your arm near fell off, then pop the whole mess into a boiling-hot oven. It got puffier than a cloud and came with an equally inflated price.

“I had been working as a line cook for about two months, when I got a promotion. I was promoted to duck wrangler. I had no idea what that job was. But a promotion was a promotion.

“I was asked to go to the alley behind Blue and there I was met by a man with a very greasy mullet. He handed me a rusty meat cleaver, pointed to the metropolis of cages that clogged up the rest of the alley, then left.

“Immediately, agony-filled quacks emerged from the cages. Then I realized what ‘duck wrangler’ meant. The ducks in the cages were future soufflé, and I was supposed to kill them. But I couldn’t do that . I love animals too much. ”So I did what any impulsive, immature person would do. I unlatched the cages. All of them.

“I was blanketed in a white world of feathers a d flapping. The ducks flew out of the alley and poured into the sky. I knew I had done the right thing.

“Needless to say, I was fired from my job at Blue twenty-seven minutes later. But I did gain two very important things that day: my devotion to vegetarianism and my nickname, Ducky.”

The mystery had been solved.