If you’ve been out on the road and seen a Jeep in recent years, you’ve probably noticed the army of rubber ducks on its dashboard. Walking through a parking lot, you might feel an army of rubber ducks watching you from all sides, monitoring your every movement.
Your eyes don’t deceive you, and you aren’t going crazy. “Duck duck Jeep” is totally a thing, and here’s why.
What Is Ducking?
The process of “Ducking” is pretty simple: It’s a show of respect between Jeep owners, where one Jeep owner will leave a toy rubber duck on another Jeep owner’s vehicle, hoping to simply make their day. It’s more or less a random act of kindness and an inside joke between people who just really love the auto brand and appreciate each other’s vehicles.
In some cases you might come across a Jeep with an entire dashboard of rubber ducks on it – or “in the duck pond,” as some Jeep people call it. Like many other car brands, Jeep owners are a dedicated bunch, and it’s a real badge of honor to collect these rubber ducks, especially when using a Jeep on, say, a cross-country road trip, collecting these ducks in all sorts of different places.
How Did Jeep Ducking Start?
It all started with one person – a Canadian resident named Allison Parliament – and a Jeep Wrangler. After a particularly intense and frightening verbal and physical encounter with someone in the early days of COVID in 2020 (not a great time for anyone, really), Parliament simply wanted to cheer herself up in any way possible. She decided to leave a rubber duck on a Jeep Wrangler just like her own, bringing herself just the slightest amount of joy on a bad day.
Accompanying the rubber duck was a simple note that read, “Nice Jeep.”
From there, as this moment was posted on social media, the craze just took on a life of its own throughout the Jeep community around the world. Owners who leave or receive a duck – it doesn’t have to just be on a Wrangler, obviously – will often post about it on social media using the #duckduckjeep hashtag, helping to spread the word through groups with massive amounts of members, including a main Duck Duck Jeep Facebook group that is crossing 100,000 members.
As someone who has always admired and wanted the Jeep Gladiator, I have to say, I like the idea of people patting me on the back for taking the plunge. I haven’t done it yet, but the thought of getting a bunch of rubber ducks from strangers does help sway me just a bit. I’ve never been much of a brand loyalist when it comes to anything, but I see the appeal. Maybe I’ll be a Jeep guy down the road thanks to these rubber duckies. It would at least help stave off the despair of knowing what it costs to even own a car these days.
