Hey bigbrennan,
First off include() is the wrong function to be using here - it is intended for including and evaluating
php code.
The proper function for doing what you're doing is
file_get_contents(), which returns the contents of the specified contents as a string.
The link was being sent to the browser because it wasn't encapsulated in php tags.
The number 1 was being sent to the browser because by default include() returns true or false depending on whether the inclusion of the file was successful.
When you echo a boolean value, it is automatically converted to either 1 (true) or 0 (false).