The substance, a jar of moutarde du Dijon, the place and date of acquisition long forgotten, the reason - a lone male Muscovy duck. The duck, who as of today remains at large due to my own faintness of heart, is a domestic variety that was abandoned in Mountain Lake, possibly by an urban farmer who didn't know what else to do with it. The duck lives a life on the margins, swimming after a clique of American coots who refuse to associate with it, and getting barraged with rocks and insults from tourists who think it is an "aquatic turkey vulture". Its existence is one of isolation, a pariah rejected from the natural and built environments, no hope of filling a role in domestic or wild contexts. For a long time, it was my intention to shoot it with a bow and arrow, but I was never able to muster up the guts to do so. As someone who works in the park where the duck resides, my killing it would have to take place in secret, lest I lose my job. I made slow progress towards my goal, hand waxing and twining a bowstring and purchasing a jar of mustard, which would be incorporated into the cassoulet that I would eventually make after turing the duck's thighs into duck confit. What ended up happening is we began water testing on Mountain Lake, and once I knew just how disgusting the water was, I lost all interest in eating anything associated with it. And so the jar of mustard sits in the back of my fridge, occasionally used to glaze roasted fennel, but for the most part neglected.