get your ducks in a row

Example: “Before you ask the bank for a loan, get your ducks in a row.”

Origin: Three explanations compete and none has been established. The most familiar points to ducklings, which really do follow a parent in a single trailing line — a tidy, orderly image, though it describes something ducks do by themselves rather than anything requiring arrangement. A second looks to bowling, where early pins were short and squat enough to be nicknamed ducks, and where a frame cannot begin until they have been reset in their proper positions. A third points to carnival shooting galleries, whose mechanical target ducks tracked past the shooter in a row. All three are plausible, all three are widely repeated, and the phrase is only attested in American English from the late 1800s, well after any of the practices in question, which leaves the question genuinely open.