If You Find Rubber Ducks In Strange Places On A Cruise Ship, Here's Why

We tend not to associate rubber ducks with cruise ships, unless they're tiny cruise ships floating in a bath tub about to ram into one. But on regular big cruise ships, you'll sometimes see a rubber duck where you least expect it, like behind a plant or looking out of place on a prized buffet. They probably didn't hop onto the deck from the water, so someone clearly brought them onboard. Plenty of passengers are doing just that.

It's a trend that appears to have been started in 2018 by 10-year-old Abby Davis, who hid 50 ducks aboard a Carnival Cruise just for fun. We don't know if her parents approved of it, but we do know that ever since numerous cruise passengers have been hiding ducks all over ships, with little notes attached explaining the trend, who left the duck, and encouraging others to keep it going and post pictures online.

Offhand, it's not the most complicated trend out there. You simply pack some rubber ducks in your luggage — possibly at the accidental expense of one of the things you need to pack for a cruise, like a toothbrush — and then proceed to hide them around the cruise ship good hiding spaces, hunting for ones others have hidden as well, and re-hiding them. That's where the rules come in.

You can't just put rubber ducks anywhere like in the buffet scrambled egg tray (which you may want to avoid on a cruise) or the boiler room below deck. There are generally agreed upon rules to the trend intended to protect the safety of the people (and kids) searching for them, because if there's a horrid accident as a result of a hidden duck, you can bet the cruise ships will put an end to whole thing.

Rubber ducks shouldn't be placed in pools or hot tubs, so someone doesn't hurt themselves and fall in while trying to get to it. While it would be a great hiding spot, they also shouldn't be put in gift shops as picking one up might look like shoplifting, especially since the duck can't speak up and defend you. Bathrooms and food service areas should be avoided for hygienic reasons, as should any place where the duck could fall into water.

If you've been avoiding cruise ships, perhaps hiding or finding some ducks on one might be an incentive. There are no real rules with regards to the ducks themselves. They can be your standard-issue yellow rubber duck, but they can also be any color, size, shape, or material, whatever you want to go with when buying or customizing your own cruise ship duck. Some people go with duck-related items as well, like Legos or duck-shaped Hot Wheels. If it looks like a duck (or duck-related) and seems out of place, it's probably part of the trend.

Who knows how far all this rubber duck business may go? We may one day see cruise ships shaped like a rubber duck, and in years to come Abby Davis may be thought of as a sort of folk legend like Santa Claus, somehow hiding ducks on all the cruise ships around the world in one evening.