Before long, the ducks will leave the Peabody Little Rock lobby fountain, walk their red carpet to the elevator, get off on the mezzanine and take their “limo” to their off-hours home in the hotel for the last time.

After that, they’ll return to the farm where they were raised, and then, who knows where.

Teams of one male and four hens pull tours of duty for three to six months, so in the decade that the Peabody has been in downtown Little Rock that would equal a hundred or more of the mallards.

Though with their uniform appearance, no one would know that except for the Duck Master, and the ducks themselves, of course.

Come May, the hotel itself will fly away. Not in the illusionist David Copperfield sense. It will become a Marriott.

The ducks are a trademark for three Peabody hotels, including the original in Memphis and another in Orlando, Fla.

Eighty years ago, the first ducks were introduced to the fountain of the Memphis hotel as part of someone’s drunken lark.

They caught on and evolved into the teams of five, sort of like a daffy military unit, with a squad in reserve. They enter the lobbies of the three hotels at 11 a.m. daily to John Philip Sousa’s “The King Cotton March,” where they splash, shallow-dive and strike one-leg poses before departing at 5 p.m.

No one would’ve given the male-to-female ratio of the teams a second thought back in the early days.

But, maybe because of the advent of equal opportunity in the military, the hotel has actually gotten e-mails of complaint.

There is a natural order to it. If there were more than one male there would be fights to establish the alpha drake, according to Bruce Skidmore, director of sales and marketing for the Little Rock hotel.

(Have you ever seen Donald Duck’s nephews, Huey, Dewey and Louie, get into it?)

The location of the duck farm is a secret. The Peabody folks “don’t want to have people coming by and trying to buy a Peabody duck,” Skidmore said.

The ducks’ flight feathers - which, like Army recruits’ hair, were clipped upon induction - are allowed to grow back.

After they get their wings back, the birds are freed. And they can join their wild friends,and be hunted.

And, no, Skidmore said, the ducks have no tattoo or band identifying them as Peabody property.

It’s entirely possible that a Peabody duck has already landed incognito as the entree on someone’s dinner table.

But let’s not think about that too much.

Maybe that’s why the hotel didn’t give the ducks pet names.

If you have a tip, call Jack Weatherly at (501) 378-3518 or e-mail him at: [email protected].

Business, Pages 67 on 03/31/2013