In the winter of 1992, the Pacific Ocean received an unintended gift: 28,000 rubber ducks, lost from a cargo ship and left to wander the world's waters. What commerce discarded, science quietly claimed. Over two decades, oceanographer Curtis Ebbesmeyer and his colleagues followed the ducks' dispersal across hemispheres, gathering from beachcombers and fishermen what no laboratory could have produced — a living, drifting map of how the ocean breathes and moves. The experiment reminds us that nature has always been teaching; we need only lose something bright enough to follow.