Five little ducks (The Horror! The Horror!)

Have you seen this song?

FIVE LITTLE DUCKS

Five little ducks went out to play
(Hold up five fingers)
Over the hill and far away
(hide fingers behind back)
Mother duck said, “Quack, quack, quack, quack”
(Make hand into duck bill and open and close)
But only four little ducks came running back.
(Hold up four fingers)

This is a moment, for me, of sheer existential terror. Where did that little duck go? Why does no-one—the other ducks, the song-writer, the imagined reader, even the mother duck, for heaven's sake—express even the slightest hint of concern for that lost duck?

The shock of verse one is intensified with a sense of brooding anticipation as we contemplate the equally alarming words of the next verse:

Four little ducks went out to play
(Hold up four fingers)
Over the hill and far away
(hide fingers behind back)
Mother duck said, “Quack, quack, quack, quack”
(Make hand into duck bill and open and close)
But only three little ducks came running back.

Why would the mother duck view the disappearance of a second of her children with such callous and depraved indifference? Can she not count? Is there an innocent explanation that would see this as simple oversight, rather than as evidence of some type of foul play?

Many other questions occur. Not least: Where is the father duck, aka "The Drake", and contemptuously referred to among acquaintances as "The Goose".

The instructions for the rest of the song begin as follows:

(Repeat until no ducks come back-3, 2, 1, 0)

If I was a child with even an ounce of imagination this would be nightmare material. Is mother duck a serial killer? Are the bodies of her children buried "over the hill and far away"? Why is my mother singing this song to me?

And the unexpected and unforeseen denouement brings no relief to the troubled soul:

So mother duck said,
“QUACK, QUACK, QUACK, QUACK”
And five little ducks came running back!

Where had those little ducks been?

Alien abduction ought to be considered as a possibility.