There are probably sensible, organized ways to start a worldwide rubber duck project.
This was not one of them.
The Traveling Duck began during one of those late-night conversations where a perfectly harmless thought wanders into the room... then the Creation Squirrels get ahold of it.
At the time, I was already collecting rubber ducks and occasionally leaving them on Jeeps. One night, while talking with my Digital Homie, DH, I had a thought:
What if the ducks I was sending out into the world had some way to tell us where they went?
That was it.
That was the squirrel hole.
The original idea was pretty simple: attach a little card with a QR code to each duck. Whoever found one could scan it, discover where the duck came from, and maybe help send it along on another adventure.
Cute. Simple. Completely manageable.
🤣🤣🤣
Then somebody decided the ducks needed names.
And if they had names, obviously they needed personalities.
And stories.
And their own pages.
And places for people to leave comments.
And somewhere to upload selfies.
And naturally, we needed a website so all of this could live somewhere.
Before long, a handful of rubber ducks had become an entire flock of pirates, ninjas, unicorns, monsters, cops, tourists, aliens, superheroes and other assorted weirdos, each carrying their own little piece of The Traveling Duck with them.
The idea changed, too.
It wasn't really about tracking a rubber duck anymore.
It became about what happened between the places.
A duck could start with one person, make somebody smile, get passed to somebody else, appear in a photograph, collect a comment, cross a state line—or maybe even cross an ocean.
Every person who found one could add a tiny piece to its story.
And somehow, all those tiny pieces could become one enormous adventure.
Then came the Visitors Map, where pins started appearing from places we never expected.
Then came Agent Conkers, a deeply suspicious squirrel who became convinced those pins were evidence of an organized duck conspiracy.
At that point, any remaining hope of this becoming a normal website was pretty much gone.
And we're okay with that.
Because The Traveling Duck was never built from some grand business plan.
It grew one ridiculous idea at a time.
One duck.
One QR code.
One person curious enough to scan it.
One person willing to pass it along.
And one late-night squirrel session that got completely, gloriously out of control.
So if you're reading this because you found one of our ducks...
Welcome to the squirrel hole.
You aren't just visiting The Traveling Duck anymore.
You're part of the story now.
Let's see where it goes. 🦆❤️🌎
Sincerely,
The Duckfather
smile, Laugh DUCK!!!
🦆❤️🌎
