Updated Rules for Our Town's Annual Rubber Duck Race

Dear Morrisgate Township residents,

The Morrisgate Duck Race at Riverbend Park is a 40+ year tradition, bringing this community together to cheer alongside our neighbors as hundreds of rubber ducks are released off of the Veterans Memorial Footbridge, making their way downstream for a chance to win some neat prizes.

While the Duck Race is intended as a light-hearted, family-friendly competition (and a vital fundraiser for our local schools), due to the “incidents” at last year’s event, we have been forced to institute the following rules for participating in this year’s race:

1. No scalping Duck Race tickets.
2. No counterfeiting Duck Race tickets.
3. No live ducks, even if they’re on a leash.
4. No glass bottles.
5. No breaking glass bottles.
6. No threatening Duck Race volunteers with broken glass bottles.
7. No side-betting on the ducks. (While it pains us to do so, we have also dropped DraftKings as a corporate sponsor.)
8. No coughing the word “bullshit” when the mayor says the race is “all in good fun.”
9. No pelting the mayor with pinecones.
10. No wading into the water after the rubber ducks are dropped from the bridge to find your duck and throw it toward the finish line.
11. No submerging oneself below the waterline and using a hollow reed to breathe through while wearing goggles to search the underside of each duck for your ticket number.
12. No shooting BB guns at the ducks to impede or improve their progress.
13. No urinating on the ducks to impede or improve their progress.
14. No concealed or open-carry rubber ducks allowed on the Riverbend Park grounds during the event.
15. No gas-powered ducks.
16. No selling of T-shirts featuring lewd, vulgar, or sexual imagery of rubber ducks and humans “Doin' it Ducky Style.”
17. Similarly, no such images may be displayed on flags, banners, poster boards, as tattoos on any exposed parts of the body, or airbrushed on the side of a van.
18. No racist chants about the non-yellow rubber ducks.
19. No burning effigies of the mayor if your duck does not win.
20. No burning effigies of the mayor if your duck does win.
21. No calling any child who wins one of the $10 Sweetie’s Ice Cream Shop gift certificates “an entitled little leech.”
22. No burning effigies of children.
23. No identity-concealing duck costumes (except, per tradition, the mayor’s spouse who will be dressed up as our mascot, Lucky the Ducky).
24. No kidnapping Lucky the Ducky.
25. No public statements denying the Duck Race results or demanding a re-race.
26. No calling the mayor a “traitor” and forcing them to immediately resign in public with terror-stricken, tear-filled eyes while under assault from a barrage of broken glass and pinecones.
27. No declarations of Riverbend Park as a sovereign, anarchist city-state.
28. No spoken or written vows for “revenge.”
29. No dyeing the river waters to look like blood.
30. No lawn chairs higher than 12” off the ground, so our littlest Duck Racers can see all the action!

Please abide by these rules, and let’s make next week’s Morrisgate Duck Race a splashing success.

Sincerely,

Sheriff Magnus Hargrave, Interim Mayor (by authority of martial law)