For the past year, thousands of tiny duck figurines have invaded the neighborhood of Chelsea.
They come in a variety of colors — blue, green, white or pink. Some even glow in the dark. Other figurines aren’t even ducks, but instead frogs, sharks, unicorns or even an ultra-rare axolotl salamander.
The teensy toys are about the size of nickels and each has a little magnet attached to the base, allowing it to be stuck to any piece of metal on the street – like a wrought iron fence, a light post or a mailbox.
The ducks are a hyperlocal Pokémon-style sensation. Kids’ eyes light up at just the mention of the “little ducks.” They collect and trade the figurines, while their parents are left wondering: Who the heck is leaving them behind?
Now, Gothamist can report it has quacked the case.
A year-long investigation initiated by this gumshoe reporter while picking his kids up from school revealed the duck-dropping trend began before the pandemic and then was turbo-charged by a copycat waterfowl distributor late last year.
“It just feels like a scavenger hunt,” said Eddie Gungor, 10, who has found the little toys on fire hydrants, stop signs and fences.
He said that when the number of ducks in the neighborhood started showing up last December, he didn’t know if he should take them. But soon, the floodgates opened. He noticed a girl in his class with a handful of the figurines.
“I was collecting them all over, and it’s like, crazy. There’s hundreds. There’s so many,” he said at Clement Clarke Moore Park.
Another local student at the playground, Lulu, 10, said the ducks are great entertainment while adults do adult stuff. Her parents, like those for the majority of the children Gothamist spoke to for this investigation, asked for only her first name to be published.
“You’re just waiting for your adult to get off the phone and you’re bored, so you’re just looking around and then you spot them,” Lulu said. “Seeing one is kind-of also like a mystery because they’re just left around town.”
Gothamist has for more than a year pond-ered who is behind these tiny ducks all over Chelsea.
Stephen Nessen / Gothamist
Gothamist began investigating late last year after hearing from a local parent that the mysterious figure behind the figurines was likely a man named Brian. He lives in the neighborhood, is quite dapper and frequents a local coffee shop, the tipster said.
Gothamist stopped by the coffee shop dozens of times over the past year and left business cards and messages for Brian. But each time, multiple baristas confirmed he would not speak to the press about the ducks.
A breakthrough came last month when new stickers appeared on street signs in Chelsea with a link to an Instagram account called @Chelseaduckmags. The bio reads: “Defacing Chelsea since December 2023 in an attempt to bring joy to people. Please send pics and I will post what I can!”
The account is run by a different person, JJ Cerillo, who took the duck-dropping trend to new heights.
“Sometimes I’ll throw them on mailboxes, I’ll put them on the sides of things where you pay for the parking, because they’re also metal. I’ve learned a lot about what’s metal and what’s not metal in New York,” said Cerillo, 52, of Inwood.
Cerillo is a dog walker who spends most of her days in Chelsea. Her pockets are often bulging with the tiny magnetic creatures.
On a recent afternoon, she fished a blue magnetic duck out of her pocket and stealthily stuck it to a stop sign. She put another on a railing. And a boxy duck wearing sunglasses on the fence of the Highline Hotel, where it was nearly impossible to spot next to the thick shrubbery.
On the weekends she glues hundreds of magnets to the bottom of little ducks and other creatures she orders on Amazon.
JJ Cerillo spends her weekends gluing magnets to tiny ducks. It’s a hard job, but somebody has to do it.
Stephen Nessen / Gothamist
“It helps me to stay kind of centered and balanced and quiet. It just quiets my mind,” she said.
But Cerillo admitted she didn’t come up with the idea.
It was Brian – whoever he is – who started the trend.
“Brian’s like the genius,” she said. “He’s very elusive. He’s kind of like Bigfoot.”
One day just before the pandemic shut down the city, she said she spotted a well dressed middle-aged man placing something on a railing. It was a LEGO toy. But she didn’t speak to him.
Then, last December, she saw him again and found the courage to strike up a conversation.
He had a handful of little ducks wearing Santa hats. She asked casually if he was the duck guy. He confirmed. She asked if he ever placed little LEGO people around Chelsea. He said that was him, but he gave up on LEGOs because they were too expensive.
And that was when Cerillo hatched her plan to dramatically expand the duck hunt.
“I decided to go on a much larger scale and just fill this whole Chelsea [neighborhood] with ducks, everywhere,” she said.
She calculated that on average she places about 200 ducks and other creatures every day she’s in the neighborhood. That’s about 4,000 a month, which adds up to more than 30,000 since last December. By Cerillo’s estimation, she’s distributed roughly the same number of ducks in Chelsea as there are humans who live in Gramercy, just across town.
“The only thing I don’t like about this venture is, as much as I enjoy it, it’s a very expensive venture,” she said. “I guess if I [needed] anything, it would be just something like a little duck fund: Go Duck Me. Not even to make money; it’s more about breaking even so that I could buy more ducks.”
The children of Chelsea are obsessed with these little magnetic figurines.
Stephen Nessen / Gothamist
Just when the mystery of the ducks appeared to be solved a new twist emerged.
Earlier this month, a red metal box the size of a small briefcase appeared fixed to a no parking sign at 10th Avenue and 23rd Street. “Library” was painted on its exterior. Inside its door, an inscription says, “Give a Duck, Take a Duck.”
Cerillo said she had nothing to do with the guerilla duck-swapping station — but it was quickly a hit among kids.
Two long-time devoted duck collectors, sisters Lolo, 6, and Blake, 8, recently looked at the box in awe. They had a few magnetic figures on hand and swapped them out for a few stashed in the box.
While admiring her new find, Blake revealed she’d followed in Cerillo’s footsteps.
She said that over the summer, she left a handful of ducks around Rome while on vacation with family.
“I ran out of them,” she said, adding that she wanted to start leaving her own duck figurines around Chelsea, which she was making out of little erasers.
As for Brian, the OG duck man, he finally called back. He declined to provide his last name, but confirmed he was behind the box. He declined further comment, saying he wanted to remain a mystery.