Mercer Police sent a campus-wide email announcing the second annual "Ducks for Decals" scavenger hunt on Sept. 3. Six winners will receive orange parking decals – a hot commodity at Mercer that permits students to park in any lot on campus.
The department scattered 36 rubber ducks around the university, with the six decal-winning birds dawning police attire, according to Corporal Tim Moore. Mercer Police moved forward with the Ducks for Decals idea after Secretary Leigh Sloan presented the idea in 2024.
“It's also an event for students to actually see the campus as well," Moore said. “This gets them to adventure out a little bit and see the entire campus.”
The ducks are hidden in areas that students tend to frequent less because, he said, MerPo "wanted to encourage students to utilize the baseball parking lot, since it is one of the few parking lots where every color decal can park.”
Moore hinted that campus attractions such as the Jesse Mercer statue and Hardman Hall are also potential hiding spots.
The turnout for this year’s hunt surpassed MerPo’s expectations with over 300 students participating in the search, Moore said. Scheduling conflicts and Labor Day festivities resulted in non-students finding the ducks before the official announcement, according to Moore.
Mercer Police hope that events such as Ducks for Decals will connect the students and police department as a community.
“We are approachable and have open conversations with our students,” Moore said. “Where they may not be open to talk to an officer in their hometown or something, and something happens, they can come to us and talk to us."
MerPo will increase the amount of ducks next fall, but will keep only six winning birds, according to Moore.
“I want to thank everybody that participated in this. We had a great week, and to keep an eye on their emails, because we do have things in the works,” Moore said.
MerPo gave The Mercer Cluster the names of each of the winning students and their ducks’ locations. The students included Charlotte Thompson ‘29 (University Center wall), Dana Wentzell ‘28 (Hardman Hall), Emily Cullura ‘28 (Cruz Plaza), Owen Pope ‘28 (Claude Smith Field parking lot), Adeline Mccurley ‘29 (Einstein Bros. Bagels) and Hollis Engle ‘27 (Claude Smith Field parking lot).
Though there were only six ducks to be found, two students found the same duck at the same time, according to MerPo, who supplied a seventh orange decal for their collaborative searching efforts.
"The duck hunt was very serious, I was scavenging the whole campus and I wasn't going to stop until I found a duck," Cullura said. "My duck was waiting for me in the middle of Cruz in plain sight."
Nathaniel Jordan '29 intends to major in Journalism at Mercer and hopes to work as an investigative journalist. His hobbies include poetry, photography and home cooking, and you can probably find him around Macon shopping or walking through local parks with his wife and son.
