What the Duck? Rubber Birds Left On Jeeps Baffle the Nation

Derik Fetters was leaving the farmers market in Reading, Pa., in May 2022 when he came upon a rubber ducky, perched on his Jeep. The 57-year-old illustrator was confused.

A tag dangled off it, bearing a message: If the duck brought him a smile, snap a picture and post about it. 

Less than a week later, outside a restaurant, it happened again. This time, Fetters investigated the phenomenon and he started—because, why not?—putting ducks on other Jeeps. He has since given away about 1,500 ducks, at an estimated cost of $270.

“It always makes me happy when somebody takes a picture of one of mine and thanks me for ducking them,” he says.

Few drivers are as tribal as Jeep drivers. When they pass each other on the road, Jeep code requires them to wave. It is called…the Jeep wave. Lately, some Jeep people have taken to leaving rubber ducks on the door handles of other Jeeps.

Hashtags on social media such as #duckduckjeep or #jeepducking have more than 30 million views, and a ducking Facebook group boasts more than 75,000 members. At the Detroit Auto Show in September, Jeep dealers erected a 60-foot-tall rubber duck near the exhibit hall.

Allison Parliament, who bought a Jeep Wrangler in June 2020, says she accidentally invented “Jeep ducking” during the pandemic as a way to boost peoples’ spirits, including her own.

While on a road trip, she stopped at a discount store, spotted rubber-duck bath toys, and decided to buy a few to scatter around her partner’s apartment. As she left, another Jeep caught her eye, one that was tricked-out with aftermarket rims, heavy steel bumpers and a Hi-Lift jack. 

She took out a duck, wrote “Have a great day” on it, and handed it to the Jeep owner. He laughed and told her to put a picture of that on the internet, so she did.

“For me, it’s about making other people smile,” says Parliament, 34. “Everything felt like it was falling apart for lots of us and the ducks were a simple way to say, ‘Hey you’re not alone.’ ”

Some have turned ducking into a game by involving kids and neighbors or by matching the duck’s color to a given Jeep’s paint job. For many Jeep owners—or “Jeepers,” as some say—the duck ritual is a Jeep-world privilege, along with the meetups, off-road rallies, beach events and made-for-Jeep accessories. But there is debate about which Jeep models are considered duck-worthy. And there are never-duckers who find the little gifts wasteful.

Truman Trower, a 19-year-old film and television major at the Savannah College of Art and Design, has an orange 2012 Jeep Wrangler that has been ducked about 50 times, she says. She refuses to play along.

While she tries to find new homes for ducks she gets, she worries others are tossing them on the ground and contributing to litter. That’s just not ducky. “There’s so much plastic and just for a silly joke,” she says.

After finding a duck on her Jeep in August, she posted a TikTok about how she doesn’t want to play the “stupid duck duck jeep game.” She had to turn off the comments after people began writing rude things. “She must be fun at parties,” read one comment.

Andrea Norris, 30, got a Jeep in 2021 so she could go off-roading and take the top off the car—or as Jeep drivers call it, “go naked.” Then a friend told her about Jeep ducking. 

The practice has become one of Norris’ favorite things about owning a Jeep. She buys variety-packs of rubber ducks that look like butterflies, lions and even doctors and painters. She says she’s distributed about 150 ducks in Lincoln, Neb., where she lives, and leaves them on the handles of Jeep Wranglers with a tag that says “You’ve been ducked.”

In February, finally, someone put a duck on her Jeep. Dressed as a blue butterfly, it sits on her dashboard. Her Jeep hasn’t gotten another rubber duck since, but she’s OK with that.

“It kind of makes it more special when it doesn’t happen as often,” she says. 

Stellantis, Jeep’s parent company, hasn’t claimed ducking as a company effort and sees it as a grassroots one, says Jim Morrison, senior vice president and head of the Jeep brand in North America. 

“We don’t run Jeep, our Jeep community does,” he adds. He says his Jeep has been ducked more than 10 times.

P.J. Harrington, a 20-year-old student at the University of Miami, got a 2019 Jeep Grand Cherokee last year and has been trying to get into the Jeep lifestyle by giving the wave to fellow Jeep drivers. He also started ducking at his school’s parking lot where Jeeps abound, he says. 

Some purists duck only the most classic Jeep models. Harrington ducks any type of Jeep, as does 22-year-old Abby Berner. 

“It is actually supposed to be just for Jeep Wranglers and Jeep Gladiators, but I wanted all these to feel the love and spread the joy to all types of Jeeps,” says Berner. 

Emily Mills first got a duck, a purple one, on her Jeep in 2020. The 31-year-old special-education coordinator in Toledo, Ohio, says her Jeep has since been ducked about six times. Her 26-year-old sister, Anna, became jealous: She owns a Buick. 

She bought a pack of rubber sheep and started the “baa baa Buick” movement. So far, she has “sheeped” 20 Buicks. It has yet to catch on.

Write to Ann-Marie Alcántara at [email protected]