Opening Speech 2022

Delivered by Benjamin Torcellini at Duck Day.

Welcome, welcome, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, dogs and cats,
ducks and groundhogs, and everyone else in TV land, and the interwebz.
Welcome to the 8th annual Duck Day. With much sadness, we lost our
first superior weather duck at the age of 7 1/2 years old. His son will be
predicting the weather this year.

Long ago, Groundhog Day came from the holiday Candlemas, celebrated by
the Catholics and Lutherans on February 2nd. They used a Badger to
predict the weather on that day to see if the winter would be long or
short.

In America, German speaking Dutch Settlers used a Badger to predict the
weather in Pennsylvania. If the Badger emerged and saw his shadow, that
predicted six more weeks of winter.

The first mention of a groundhog predicting the weather was in the 1840s
in Pennsylvania. James L. Morrs of Morgantown Pennsylvania wrote in his
diary about his neighbors using a groundhog. The event has grown from
there.

Predicting the weather is not easy for many. Man mixes it up, Groundhogs
mix it up, some people even use pigs who mix it up. New England is one
of the toughest regions for weather predicters. The temperature can be
20 degrees one day, 50 degrees the next, and then 20 degrees again.
"Climate is what we expect, weather is what we get," said the great
scribe Mark Twain. Once Mark Twain even counted 270 different types of
weather in one day. So, we looked for a better way to predict the
weather. We found the duck, the one and only duck, the duck that can
predict with perfect accuracy!

This duck graduated from Stormy Heights Academy as the valeducktorian of
his class. This extremely intelligible bird spoke for 7 years as the
town weather preducktor with perfect accuracy. He offered much help and
warning to the town's people to know what to be prepared for. Now his
son has decided to follow in the footsteps of his father, graduating as
the valeducktorian of Stormy Heights Academy once again. We know that he
will do his job, as his father did, with perfect accuracy. We give much
thanks to this intelligent bird for his weather predicting service.

We would like to thank 1st Selectman Deb Richards for permission to
host this event, Carol Davidge for helping to make this event known in
past years, State Representative Pat Boyd and State Senator Dan
Champagne for years of support, our brother Micah who runs the website
and helps with press relations, and everyone who has helped with and has
attended for all these years.

AND NOW WE PRESENT...ducks like drumrolls, so help us out!

Scramble the Duck!

Please do not use flash on your cameras during the prediction as it
could cause false shadows. Thank You!