Atlas Obscura:
Each day for nearly one hundred years, a group of ducks have left their penthouse at Memphis’ Peabody Hotel and waddled down a red carpet to spend the day playing in the lobby fountain.
Every morning around 11:00 AM, the ducks are led down from their rooftop penthouse to a red carpet bordered by adoring onlookers. Accompanied by a Sousa march, the five ducks trot up a small, custom stairway into the placid waters of the marble fountain where they dutifully swim until they are once again led back upstairs around 5:00 PM. The whole ceremony is preceded over by the “Duckmaster,” a position originally filled by a circus trainer that joined the hotel in the 1940’s, and which is now filled by the occasional celebrity such as Molly Ringwald or Peter Frampton.
I’ve seen this duck march and it’s a wonderfully silly Southern tradition. If you’re ever in Memphis (it happens in the Peabody Hotel in Orlando, Fl as well but it’s just not as good), you owe it to yourself to go see the ducks. Thanks to AdiKingsley-Hughes for the link to the video.