FarmVille: The Case of the Missing Holiday Ducks

A new mystery has appeared in the land of FarmVille, concerning an item that was assumed to be released with last night's FarmVille update, but either wasn't, or jumped out of the store just as soon as it entered. The item is the Holiday Ducks decoration (a set of ducks standing underneath mistletoe that apparently kiss). As this entire ordeal has spawned user outrage and confusion, we thought we'd take a minute to shed some light on the current state of affairs concerning when and if this item will ever be coming back to the store.

As of last night's update, the Holiday Ducks are nowhere to be found in the game, which is especially odd, considering that a recently added FarmVille loading screen, and the in-game marketplace (pictured) both contain images of the item. So, at least we know that the Holiday Ducks are real.

Multiple threads have appeared on the official FarmVille forums concerning these missing animals, with some users reporting that the Ducks were available in the store for a very brief period yesterday evening, before mysteriously vanishing without a trace. Furthermore, Zynga even announced that the Holiday Ducks were available in the store for 15 Farm Cash. We've read user reports of finding the ducks for 15 or 20 Farm Cash, but we have no visual proof of their existence - they disappeared that quickly.

This becomes even more of an issue when we take a look at the time limit for the other Winter Holiday items that are currently available in the store. Even those items that were released last night will only be available for 9 days, and every day that the ducks remain MIA is apparently another day that users won't have to purchase them, if and when they reappear.

Where did they go? Honestly, we don't know at this point. As of this writing, they are nowhere to be found in the game's store, and they aren't on the free gifts page. We've contacted Zynga for comment, and will be sure to let you know if and when this situation changes. We're assuming that this the disappearance of the ducks was due to an in-game glitch of some kind, but we'll continue to keep digging for information in case something else is going on.

Check out the rest of our Holiday 2010 coverage right here.

In the meantime, let us know if you've spotted these Holiday Ducks for yourself in the comments. Do you have the Ducks in your own store right now? We'd love to see a screenshot, if you have one!