Editor’s Note: This story is satirical.
It seemed like just another steamy summer day on Lake Mendota. Then there were the screams. University of Wisconsin junior Adam Longstrider put his hands to his head at the painful recollection of the event. Then remembered he had no hands. Then he remembered that, in fact, he had no arms.
“The doctors said it was the worse case of flesh-eating bacteria they had ever seen,” Longstider sobbed. “Thirty seconds I floundered in Lake Mendota. Thirty pounds of flesh the bacteria took from me.”
He was lucky. Witnesses on the scene reported seven have died from rare diseases contacted from the dock collapse so far.
Madison’s Lake Mendota has long been known as a cesspool of disease, but this was bad, even for Mendota, UW Limnologist Breck Harper said.
“It’s common to see three hundred to two thousand people come down with disease from swimming in Lake Mendota,” Harper said. “But usually it’s with the run-of-the-mill diseases. Clamydia. Mono. Lymes. Things like that.”
Harper cited several factors for the increased lethalness of Lake Mendota: Climate change. Fertilizer. And ducks.
The latest science shows a clear connection between the amount of ducks that eat human food and the number of deaths from flesh-eating bacteria, Harper said. He attributed the recent uptick in Mendota’s victims to the mama ducks that roam UW’s famed terrace.
“Yes the mama ducks are cute, especially when they come up to you and quack,” Harper said, watching one of the mama ducks waddle by. Then his face darkened. “But the problem is, they’re nasty little disease reservoirs.” He seized the nearby mama-duck’s neck with an animalistic speed and before this reporter could stop him, snapped it.
“It’s a hard world we live in,” Harper said defensively. He shoved the duck into this reporters face. “It was my flesh or this mama duck. I chose my flesh.”
UW Chancellor Moons has ordered an immediate moratorium on swimming in Lake Mendota until something can be done about the rare diseases. A service for the lives lost from the dock collapse will be held at the Terrace this Friday.
Longstrider begged others to heed his lesson.
“Don’t go in Mendota,” He said. “Not if you value your life.”
