What the Duck??

This is ducking delightful.

Duck eating a burrito. 2017. Acrylic on Cardboard by Rubi McGrory

I hope all y’all are staying as cool as humanly possible. 

I’m here to answer a question you didn’t know you needed the answer too, (and with eerie timing.)

What’s the deal with ducks and Jeeps?

I’m not a Jeep driver, I didn’t know about this random act of kindness in the Jeep community.

My friend Emily recently fulfilled a lifelong dream to  buy herself a Jeep.  A couple of months later, she posted something about having a nice duck collection for her Jeep. Why would she want that? Within a few hours I spotted a Jeep parked outside with ducks on the dashboard. 

Then I noticed that Jeeps everywhere have ducks on their dashboards. It’s a thing, Jeeps and Ducks. 

I kept meaning to look the phenomenon up online, then kept forgetting. Which is great, because I finally got to ask Emily in person. 

“It’s a giving game,” she explained. “When a fellow Jeep owner likes your Jeep, they’ll leave a rubber duck on it for you. When we see a Jeep we like, we leave a duck on it. It’s a way of saying “Hey, you’re great, your car is great. I don’t know you. Have a nice day.”

Emily and her children have a very strict checklist of attributes a Jeep must have to be duckworthy: doors must be off, colors must be interesting, the vibe must be right. 

“Coming back to my car and finding a duck makes me so very happy, but also, leaving a duck for someone also makes me so very happy,” she says. It’s so easy and inexpensive to throw some joy out in the world. 

The OG duck, from Allison Parliament’s Instagram account

DuckDuckJeep canon claims the movement began with Allison Parliament, a dual citizen of Canada and the US. On a trip to her home in Ontario in 2020, she was physically attacked in a parking lot by a Canadian who saw the Alabama plates on her car and told her she didn’t belong in his country.

Days later, shopping with a friend, Allison purchased some rubber ducks with the intent of hiding them around her friend’s house. On the way out of the store, she saw a very cool Jeep. Still traumatized from her assault, she wanted to send some positive energy into the world. She penned a quick “Nice Jeep!” note and plopped one of her new ducks atop it on the hood of the car. 

According to lore, the #duckduckjeep movement or #jeepducking began that evening with a post about it on her instagram account.  She created a Facebook group which instantly gained thousands of members. Things mushroomed from there, including fundraisers on the FB group to give grants to teachers who need classroom supplies and notoriety in the Jeep community.

Then came the knock-off groups, people trying to make money off of the movement, naysayers on Reddit claiming Allison took credit for something that already existed. 

In any event, Jeep ducking is a thing, a huge thing. A thing which exists solely to anonymously give joy to other humans, and experience the joy that comes with that gesture. 

A 24 pack of ducks will set you back about $24 on Amazon or Walmart, so at around $1 per expression, the buy-in is pretty cheap.¹ One dollar to give another human their own personal round of applause. 

Here is the eerie part. I’m writing this today, June 23, because I learned yesterday about this joy movement among the Jeep community, and I wanted you to know about it as soon as possible. 

In my research today, aside from learning all about this Jeep subculture and the altruism behind it, I also learned that Allison Parliament tragically passed away yesterday, June 22, at 34 years old. 

Thank you, Allison, for bringing joy to this sucky-ass world

1. Not taking into consideration the labor practices of the manufacturer and seller and well as environmental impact of the plastic