I
may live in a swamp, but that doesn’t mean I’m not up on the latest news. The most recent of the Lily
Pad Press had this interesting article. It is about a great rubber duck
flotilla which traveled across three oceans and half of the globe. Have your
heard about it? No? Well then, by all means read on.
It was a dark and stormy night. (I just made that up. Pretty good, eh?) The container ship was being tossed about by forty foot waves as though it were no more than a little rubber tug in a frog pond. The mighty ship held its cargo for as long as she could, but finally the storm proved too much and several containers were washed overboard. They sunk to the depths of the briny sea, lost forever. Now they were some insurance company’s headache. As for the containers in question, they settled to the bottom of the ocean with enough force to crack open and one of them released its contents slowly into the sea. In this case the contents were…. rubber ducks. Thousands of them. Slowly they began to appear on the surface of the sea and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (from here on known as the NOAA because I’m not typing THAT again!!) Picked them up on their highly sensitive equipment and began tracking their progress. These turned out to be no ordinary migrating duckies, but rather, very important scientific data measurements. Ohhhhhh, Ahhhhhhh.
Container ships, like the one picture on the right, are built to withstand whatever the ocean can throw at them. High winds, lashing rains, waves that reach up to the sky. Anything Mother Nature can whip up, they can take. I’ve always wanted to be like the guy at the bow of this mighty ship. Ready for adventure, braced against the elements. A grizzled veteran of many a dangerous ocean voyage bringing my valuable cargo safely to port. I am rudely awakened from my seafaring fancy by my daughter, Nora. She needs to use the bathroom and wants to know when I’m going to get out of the tub!!!
The incident of the overboard
duckies took place back in 1992. (Ok, the Lily Pad Press isn’t the most timely
of newspapers, but what do you want for a swamp publication). Now, after all
these years, the ducks are washing up on the eastern seaboard and those lucky
enough to find them (are they lucky ducks?) are being offered $100.00 a duck. (WOW!!
I guess they are lucky ducks) Though they are somewhat bleached from sun, ice
and sea, they are becoming a collectors item, but only if they can be
authenticated. (Whose job is that?)
The picture at left shows the migration of the ducks from the Pacific to the Atlantic Ocean. They traveled through an area know as the Pacific “Gyre”. A scientist from the NOAA referred to this area as being like a “toilet bowl that never flushes”. Now there’s an image only a scientist could bring to you. I guess that’s why it took them so long to come across to the east coast; they were hung up in the potty. These duckies have also been turning up in Hawaii, Vancouver and the Queen Charlotte Islands off Canada.
I don’t know about you, but I’m heading to the ocean as soon as I can with a giant net to harvest my bounty from the sea. I’ll let you know how I make out.
