Ducks on Parade at the Peabody Hotel

Peabody Ducks

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Even though I’m a 20-year resident of Orlando, I had yet to make it down to the Peabody Orlando (peabodyorlando.com) to behold the famous marching of the Peabody ducks. This past Monday evening, I got to see the winged waddlers walk the red carpet, led by their gold-and-crimson-clad duck master, to the timbres of John Philip Sousa's “King Cotton March.” The tradition of the Peabody ducks began back in the 1930s when then general manager of the Peabody Memphis Frank Shutt and his friend Chip Barwick returned from a weekend hunting trip in Arkansas. Soused on whiskey, the men thought it would be funny to place some of their live-duck decoys into the fountain of the Peabody hotel. People loved it, spreading their enthusiasm over the hoax far and wide, and so the tradition of the Peabody ducks was born. Each duck that has graced any of the Peabody’s fountains is the direct progeny of Schutt and Barwick’s original feathered friends. At 11 a.m. daily, Don, the duck master (I’m not making that up!) escorts the ducks down from their $100,000 penthouse to the lobby of the Peabody, where they stay in the lavish marble fountain all day, onlookers observing them over lunch and a glass of wine. Then at 5 p.m., the duck master appears again, rolling out the red carpet, to parade the ducks back to their penthouse for the evening, where they munch on organic lettuce and swim in the temperature-controlled black-marble fountain they call home.

Tags: ducks | orlando | Peabody | Peabody Hotel