Penguin Pandemonium

Dedication

For Elizabeth Morris

J.W. xx

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Dedication

Meet the Penguins!

Chapter One: Where is Everybody?

Chapter Two: Dangers of the Wild

Chapter Three: Penguin Cam-demonium

Chapter Four: The Greatest Show on Earth

Chapter Five: Bird Fight

Chapter Six: Chicks and Chinstraps

Chapter Seven: Rory Gets Goosed

Chapter Eight: The Show Must Go On

Chapter Nine: Costume Drama

Chapter Ten: No Business Like Show Business

Chapter Eleven: Hooray for Rory

Copyright

About the Publisher

Looks: Rockhoppers have spiky yellow and black feathers on their heads that look like long eyebrows.

How big? 45 to 58 cm – about half the size of adult Emperor Penguins.

Favourite food: Shrimps.

Penguin party trick: Rockhopper Penguins love to burst from the water and land on the rocks with a belly flop.

Flipper fact: They hop from rock to rock, keeping both feet together and can jump up to one and a half meters.

Looks: Fairy Penguins have blue feathers on their heads and backs but have white bellies.

How big? 30 to 33 cm – the world’s smallest penguin.

Favourite food: Sardines and anchovies.

Penguin party trick: In the wild, Fairy Penguins are nocturnal so they only go on land at night (well past the Rockhoppers’ bedtime).

Flipper fact: The world’s smallest penguin – they are also known as the Little Penguin, or the Little Blue Penguin.

Looks: Emperor Penguins have black backs, white tummies and bright splashes of yellow and orange on their front and their ears. The chicks are fluffy and grey and their faces are white, not black.

How big?! Up to one meter tall – the world’s tallest and heaviest penguin (over three times as tall as Little Blue!).

Favourite food: Squid.

Penguin party trick: When an egg is laid, the male stands with the egg on his feet to keep it warm until it hatches (this can take up to nine weeks).

Flipper fact: Emperor Penguins can stay under water for nearly twenty minutes!

Looks: Chinstrap Penguins get their name from the small black band that runs under their chin.

How big? Up to 68 cm (twice as tall as Fairy Penguins).

Favourite food: Little shrimps called krill.

Penguin party trick: Chinstraps are also known as Stonecracker Penguins because their call is so harsh it sounds like it could break stones.

Flipper fact: Chinstraps are the most common type of penguin – there are about thirteen million of them in the world.

… Ahem, he’s a GOOSE!

here was a time when the greatest day out a kid could ever have was a trip to City Zoo. In the school holidays, the queue used to stretch from the ticket kiosk all the way down Royal Road as people flocked to see the pandas, the pythons and most of all, the penguins.

But times had changed and nobody felt this more than Rory the rockhopper penguin. Since the day he hatched in the penguin enclosure he’d been the star attraction. Even as a chick, there was nothing he liked more than showing off his moves to the visitors.

Not so long ago, when Rory hopped on to the diving board and did his famous back flip with a triple somersault into the pool, the crowd went wild. They would cheer so loudly, you could hear them by the lion enclosure on the other side of the zoo. Today, there was silence.

“Where is everybody, Little Blue?” sighed Rory. “It was never this quiet when we were growing up, was it?”

His friend, the fairy penguin, tweaked his beak.

“That’s because you were the one making all the noise, Rory… ‘Let’s have a cheeping competition, Blue. Let’s throw our feeding dishes off the top diving board, Blue. Let’s creep up on the bears and shout “BOO!” Blue!’”

Rory threw back his head and hooted.

“Fun, wasn’t it?”

“The best,” admitted Blue, grabbing hold of his tail. “Remember how I used to spin you round and round like this till you got dizzy and fell. The visitors loved that, didn’t they?”

Suddenly she let go and Rory tottered across the ice, fell on his back and kicked his chubby legs in the air like a clown. But there was nobody there to laugh. Blue held out a flipper and helped him up.

“Why is no one coming to see us?” he wailed. “Is there a new baby panda stealing the show or something?”

“Maybe it’s twin baby pandas,” said Blue.

“Or maybe people have just gone off me,” said Rory, hunching down next to her.

“Maybe my stunts suck and everyone’s gone to watch the oh-so-hilarious meerkats instead. What have meerkats got that I haven’t got?”

Blue rolled her eyes.

“Let me think… Fur? A waistline? A sense of humour? Rory, get over yourself. It’s early, loads of visitors will turn up at feeding time.”

The two brown bears who lived in the paddock overlooking the penguin pool had been listening in to their conversation and interrupted.

“I wouldn’t bet on it,” said Orson. “The world of entertainment has moved on. No one wants to watch a bunch of birds eating fish heads any more.”

“You’re not even in colour. You’re black and white,” added Ursie.

It seemed that the bears were right. When Feeding Time arrived, apart from the zookeeper and his daughter, nobody else came to watch the penguins’ antics. As Rory gulped down his ration of squid, he noticed that even Savannah seemed bored.

“Dad, I wanna go home,” she said, texting madly on her mobile. “How come I have to hang out with you at the zoo every holiday? None of my friends hang out with their dads. It’s soooo embarrassing.”

The zookeeper wiped his hands on his overalls.

“I thought you loved the penguins.”

Savannah stared at him hard from under her fringe.

“Yeah, like, when I was two. Penguins just stand there stinking of squid.”

Rory almost choked. True, most of the penguins had fallen asleep on their feet after lunch but did they really stink? He had been Savannah’s favourite since she was a toddler. Surely a little thing like how he smelled couldn’t ruin their relationship? He tried to catch her eye, but Savannah tossed her hair and looked away.

“She didn’t mean it,” said Blue brightly. “She’s a teenager. She’s just trying to act cool.”

But Rory wasn’t convinced. He breathed heavily into Blue’s face.

“Do I smell squiddy to you?”

She drew back and was just about to answer when the zookeeper turned to his daughter and made a sudden, shocking announcement.

“Well, you won’t have to come to the zoo for much longer, love,” he said. “The way things are going, it will have to shut down by the end of the season.”

Shut the zoo? Rory’s beak fell open in disbelief. He shook his head and told himself he’d got it wrong but Blue had heard it too. She was standing with her flippers over her ears, trying to block out the terrible news.

“Dad, you’re joking, right?” said Savannah.

But the zookeeper was deadly serious.

“There aren’t enough visitors. There isn’t enough money coming in through the gates. Unless things pick up soon, we’ll have to find new homes for all the animals, including my penguins.”

Rory and Blue exchanged worried glances – if the zoo had to close, where would they live? City Zoo was the only home they had ever known. Savannah frowned and stopped texting.

“But Dad, they can’t just close the zoo! They can’t get rid of the penguins. I love them really. Rory is, like, my favourite person. Tell your boss he has to keep the penguins or I’ll cry forever. If that doesn’t work, tell him you need your job to pay for the new mobile you said I could have – the K135 is awesome.”

The zookeeper picked up his empty fish bucket and sighed.

“It’s not all about you, honey. Face facts, it costs a fortune to look after all the animals. If there isn’t enough money, the penguins will have to go and I’ll be out of work.”

“But you have to do something!” wailed Savannah, running after him.

As soon as they’d gone, Rory and Blue began to panic.

“What if we end up in a zoo we hate?” wailed Rory. “What if they send us to another country? What if they send us to a wildlife reserve where things that eat penguins run wild?”

Blue held out her flippers in despair. “What if they split us up?”

Rory hadn’t thought of that. Despite all the teasing and tail-pulling, life without Blue was unthinkable and it seemed that she felt exactly the same about him. They waddled towards each other and went into a huddle, just like they used to when they were chicks.

“Are you scared?” whispered Blue.

“No,” he mumbled, but she could feel his knees knocking.

“Are you lying, Rory?”

“I’m dancing.”

Blue smiled sadly to herself and stood on his feet to keep them still. They clung to each other for comfort, then Rory broke away and punched the air.

“Penguin Power!” he shouted. “I’m not going without a fight, Blue. I have to think of a way to save this zoo!”

ave you thought of a plan to save the zoo yet, Rory?” asked Blue, peering through his hutch window.

Rory yawned. He’d been awake all night trying to think of a way but so far, he’d come up with nothing.

“Of course I have a plan,” he said. “It’s brilliant.”

“Yay!” whooped Blue. “I knew you would. What is it?”

“It’s… very hard to describe,” said Rory, hoping that an idea would magically come to him.

Blue tapped her small, pink foot impatiently.

“You don’t have an idea, do you? I know when you’re lying – your nostrils bubble.”

Rory came out of his hutch wiping his beak.

“No, they don’t… Oh, all right, I haven’t come up with anything but it was impossible to think last night. All the animals were making such a noise.”

“I didn’t sleep either,” admitted Blue.

By closing time the evening before, the news about the zoo shutting down had spread way beyond the penguin pool.

The bears told the pigeon, the pigeon told the squirrel, and although the squirrel told the elephant not to breathe a word, he was big enough to do whatever he pleased and immediately sounded his trumpet to alert the lions.

Once the lions got wind of it, the whole world knew. They roared so loudly, their relatives could hear them in deepest Africa. Through a relay of barks, squeaks, squawks and grunts, the word spread around the globe and by dawn, the whole of the animal kingdom from the smallest bug to the baleen whale knew about the fate of City Zoo.

By now, the penguins were very worried about where they might end up. There were tales spread by certain bears that there wouldn’t be room in the other zoos for all of them and they would be taken abroad and released back into the wild.

Unfortunately, none of the penguins knew much about the countries their own species came from and their imaginations were running riot. Apart from their boss, Big Paulie the emperor penguin, they had all been bred in captivity. Blue’s old enemy Muriel, who belonged to a girly gang of fairy penguins, was particularly upset.

“Oh my cod, I am not going to live in the wild!” she stamped. “I need my creature comforts. They’re treating us like animals.”

“What if they send me to Australia?” worried Blue. “Do koala bears eat penguins?”

“Yes, they do,” insisted Muriel. “Penguins are their main diet. It’ll be even worse for Rory though. He’ll be sent to Chile to live with wild rockhoppers.”

“What’s so bad about Chile?” asked Rory.

“It’s in the name, squidiot,” she groaned. “It’s called Chile because it’s chilly. You’ll freeze to death in seconds. You’re not used to the climate.”

She prodded the two anxious little penguins standing next to her.

“I’m right, aren’t I, Brenda and Hatty? Chile is chilly. Not that Hatty would feel it through all her blubber.”

Brenda and Hatty, who would rather be eaten by koalas than shouted at by Muriel, nodded enthusiastically.

“Very chilly,” said Hatty.

“Brrrrr,” shivered Brenda.

Although the penguins were anxious at the idea of being left to fend for themselves in foreign parts, it didn’t seem to bother Orson.

“Ah, stuff the zoo,” he said. “So what if it closes? I’m sick of being cooped up on a fake mountain, day in, day out. Yee ha! I’m going back to Canada. I’ve got a cousin there. I’ll call him on my new mobile when it arrives and tell him to make up the spare bed.”

“You’re getting a mobile?” scoffed Muriel. “Yeah right.”

“I heard it with my own ears,” said Ursie. “Savannah said the K135 was for Orson.”

Rory, who’d heard differently, felt it was only fair to put them straight.

“She said the K135 was awesome, not for Orson.”

There was an embarrassed silence, punctuated with explosive tittering from Muriel, but Orson shrugged it off.

“So I won’t phone Canada, I’ll just turn up and say howdy. I can’t wait! I’m going to run through the woods and catch wild salmon and…”

“I don’t think so,” said Ursie. “You run like an overstuffed teddy, you can’t catch and salmon brings your bottom out in a rash. You wouldn’t last five minutes in the Rockies.”

Panic was breaking out all over the zoo from the reptile house to the aquarium. The crocodile was scared he’d end up as a handbag if he was sent to Egypt, the spitting cobra’s mouth went dry at the thought of being stuffed into a basket by an Indian snake charmer, the rhino was afraid he’d be poached in Africa, the camel was frightened he’d fry in Arabia and the warthog was so certain he’d be roasted wherever he went, he rolled in his own dung to make himself taste nasty.

When the zoo opened its gates later that morning, the few visitors who had bothered to come were very disappointed to find that most of the animals were not on display – they were hiding in fear of their lives.

The meerkats had gone underground, the leopard skulked into the back of his cave and even the hippo managed to disappear by holding his breath underwater. If he hadn’t blown off like a thunderclap and given away his position with a string of bubbles no one would have known he was there.

“This zoo is rubbish!” cried a small boy. “I can’t see any penguins!”

The penguins were there, but they were all hiding behind a fake cliff waiting for Big Paulie to lead them in a crisis meeting. For some reason, however, Big Paulie hadn’t turned up. Every time the penguins had had a problem in the past, the mighty emperor penguin had sorted it. He’d been around for as long as anyone could remember.

He’d originally come from Antarctica and as he’d travelled by plane, he always joked that he was the only penguin capable of flight. If the stories were to be believed, Big Paulie was so tough, he could dive five hundred metres under the sea without his head exploding. He was so hard, he once trekked one hundred kilometres across the icy wastes without food. He was so brave, he’d rescued his own father from the jaws of a killer whale. No wonder the other penguins were a little scared of him.

“It’s good that he’s scary, Rory,” Blue had once explained. “Remember the terrible Battle of Nesting Box between the rockhoppers and the chinstraps? If they’d had no respect for Paulie, they’d still be fighting over where to make their nests. And what about the time he protected the emperor chicks from an escaped baboon? If it hadn’t been scared of Paulie, it might have killed us all.”

But time was ticking on, there was still no sign of Paulie and the penguins were getting impatient.

“It’s unusual for him to be late,” muttered Waldo, one of the chinstrap penguins. “Come to think of it, I haven’t seen him for a while. I wonder if there’s some sort of crisis?”

“Duh!” groaned Muriel. “There’s a zoo-closing crisis. Does Paulie even know about it? If he won’t come to us, we’ll have to go to him, unless you ninnies have a better idea?”

“Rory has!” said Blue proudly. “He’s thinking of a plan to save the zoo.”

All the penguins shuffled round and stared at him hopefully.

“Let’s hear it then,” said Muriel, folding her flippers.

“Maybe later?” said Rory. “It still needs a little working on.”

But Muriel wasn’t prepared to wait.

“Here’s my plan, you go and ask Paulie for help. Everybody get behind Rory!”

“You can go in front if you like,” said Rory, but all the penguins formed an orderly line and waited for him to lead the way to Paulie’s Palace. At this time of day, Big Paulie could usually be found working-out in his courtyard – he was famous for his one-flipper press-ups and had an amazing six-pack for a penguin – but when they got there, there was no sign of him.

“He’s gone out,” said Rory, relieved. “Let’s come back tomorrow.”

“Try knocking, bird-brain,” said Muriel, rapping on the door. At the sound of footsteps, she pushed Rory forward. As the boss appeared, everyone else drew back, shocked by how scruffy Paulie looked. His head feathers were sticking out like a punk rocker’s and he smelled terrible.

“Eugh, what are those things stuck to his vest?” whispered Muriel. “Mouldy sequins?”

They were sprat eyes. Big Paulie, who was the best-groomed penguin in the zoo, had spilled fish down himself. It seemed he hadn’t bothered to preen before hitting the nest and had fallen asleep in his day feathers. His eyes were bright red and though that was the natural colour for a rockhopper, emperor penguins had brown eyes. Maybe Paulie had been peeling onions – but where would he get them from? Whatever the cause, he wasn’t himself at all.