By Gerri Miller
Staff Writer
If you have a Jeep or know someone with a Jeep, you’ve probably heard of #DuckDuckJeep. The craze of leaving a small rubber duck with a friendly note on a Jeep has become an international past time with more than 200,000 people worldwide participating.
What you may not know is that an Alabama woman with ties to our own community started the craze. The origin of the story is sad and scary, but thirty-year-old Allison Parliament turned a frightening situation into a deliberate act of kindness. These acts have made the world a little better place to live while helping teachers get supplies for their classrooms.
Allison has dual citizenship and splits her time living and working in both Canada and Clanton. She frequently visits her parents, who live on 64 acres in Titus on Lake Jordan. Her mother, Cheryl Parliament, is a teacher at Wetumpka Middle School. Allison’s 87-year-old grandmother lives in Canada and she visits and sometimes stays with her on trips up north.
It was on one of her visits to Canada last year that Allison was assaulted by a stranger. She returned to Canada in July and was cleared at the U.S./Canada border not to have to stay in quarantine after testing negative for COVID-19. She also is considered an essential worker in both countries. “When I crossed the border, I stopped in Woodstock, Ontario, at a rest stop there,” she said.
A stranger approached her at the rest stop, grabbed her shoulders and shoved her against her Jeep hard enough to leave significant bruising. He swore at her and told her she wasn’t welcome in Canada. The man attacked Allison because of pandemic concerns over her Alabama license plate.
With the U.S. seeing significantly more deaths from the virus and having a more lenient approach to containing the virus than Canada, some Canadians came to believe that U.S. citizens should not be allowed in Canada during the pandemic. Some Canadians took vigilante-style actions against Americans, damaging visiting cars with American license plates.
Allison still had three hours left to make it home to Washago, Ontario, and she said she feared for her safety the rest of the trip. Fortunately, she made it home safely but didn’t leave the house for several weeks.
Finally, on a weekend visit to extended family in Bancroft, Ontario, she and a friend decided to visit a local general store. “It was nice to be out for a change,” Allison said. “They were selling bags of rubber ducks. I bought a bag with the original intention to leave them around the house for the friend with little notes to make him laugh.”
Alllison said she walked out of the store with her bag of rubber ducks and she saw a big Jeep. She wrote “Nice Jeep-Have a Great Day!” on one of the ducks and left it on the Jeep. “The guy had the biggest smile and he just cracked up laughing,” she said.
#DuckDuckJeep was born that night. She created that hashtag as well as #DuckingJeeps. “I put the picture on Instagram and had 2,000 followers the next day,” Allison said. She and her friend then moved the group to Facebook and created the Official Ducking Jeeps Est. 2020 group.
She said the group had 10,000 people within a month and it quickly grew to 42,000 group members. There are offshoot groups and #DuckDuckJeep will soon merge with a group called the Off-road Nomads that will bring the total number of people ducking Jeeps to more than 200,000.
She has tracked the movement within 22 countries including Egypt, Jordan and Australia. She said she has gotten letters from families with disabled children who have made their days brighter by putting ducks on Jeeps.
The group live streams videos on Facebook, sponsors giveaways and holds raffles for a special teachers’ fund. Teachers can contact a group administrator on the official Facebook page (Official Ducking Jeeps Est 2020) and apply for $50-$100 grants to help buy supplies for their classrooms. Her mother’s classroom at Wetumpka Middle School was one of the first grant recipients.
“No teacher should have to choose between our children/our future and the money they need at home,” Allison said. So far, the group has given out $2,000 in funds and has another $4,000 that will also go to teachers. The group is holding a “Spend the Day with Allison” prize with winners getting dinner and the chance to go out “ducking” or off-roading with Allison, who is somewhat of a celebrity in the Jeep world.
One group that has definitely noticed the #DuckDuckJeep phenomenon is Jeep’s corporate office. “Jeep has embraced us in their 80-year history with the release of the Rubicon,” Parliament said. “We were part of the release video and they put our hashtags across the screen.”
She has spoken with the head of Jeep North America Jim Morrison and Jeep even sent her a Jeep made from Legos during Christmas. Dealerships across America are giving ducks away as part of their sales strategy.
Allison said her group is currently looking for a partner dealership to be the Official Ducking Jeeps Dealership where duckers can go to buy Jeeps or get their work done by a trustworthy source.
She said it has been difficult to see other groups taking their idea and making money from it when it was only meant to benefit charitable work. “It’s been a hard road in some ways,” she said. “One group published my phone number and address because we wouldn’t let them use our hashtags for profit,” she said. “I’ve gotten calls in the middle of the night with people telling me I’m a bad person.”
But Parliament was raised by a farming family and grew up learning the importance of helping other people. “Growing up, my Grandpa’s favorite saying was that ‘the best thing you can do is make someone smile because you don’t know what they are going through.”
Her great uncle restored military Jeeps and Allison said he started her love of all-things Jeep. “When I was a kid, my summers were filled with going off-roading and having fun,” she said. “Jeep has been a big part of my life my whole life because of my great uncle.”
And the Jeep family has grown to become a big part of her life. During Christmas, a group of Jeep owners decorated their Jeeps and created a drive-by parade for Allison’s grandmother, who was stuck at home without her family at home due to COVID-19 restrictions.
“She was laughing so hard and smiling in the snow,” Allison said. Duckers also sent her grandmother more than 200 Christmas cards and small gifts.
Allison estimates she has given away almost 8,000 ducks. She said you don’t have to drive a Jeep to play. “If I see someone who looks like they are having a bad day, I’ll go grab a duck and try to make them laugh,” she said. “It’s easy to spread a little kindness.”
Ironically, her Jeep, which she named CanaBama, had never been ducked until this week. “I was having a really bad day and a woman who was in the National Guard ducked my Jeep. She recognized who I was and started jumping up and down because she was so excited to meet me.”
Allison said the past year has been a surreal experience. “It’s humbling to know that one rubber duck could change the world,” she said.
