The Hesitating Penguin

by Elizabeth K. Gordon
for Allison Gordon
March 2007

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 Part I

Inside an egg, tucked under the

belly-pouch of her father, Zlee the
Emperor penguin heard two things: the
wind, and a song. The song came from
her mother, who was singing it to her
father, who was singing it back.
Zlee didn’t know she was an
emperor penguin. She just knew she
was warm and safe in a round dark
world that moved sometimes and
sometimes sang.
She didn’t ever want to come out.

More wind, no singing, and then

one day – light. Light through the shell
of her egg. And then she did want to
come out.
She pushed with her nose and
kicked with her feet until the light was
brighter, so bright she squeezed her
eyes shut. When she opened them
again, she saw the soft white chest of
her father. Down came his curved black
beak with the beautiful rose-colored
stripe. The beak opened, and out came
Zlee’s first meal. Her father had been
saving it for her.
Later her mother came back from
the ocean singing their song, with food
to share. Then her father started off on
the long march to the ocean for food,
but before he left he taught Zlee a new
song, a song just for her.
Wherever she sang it, no matter
how many other baby emperor penguins
were singing their song, her parents

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would know it and come for her.

That spring Zlee stood in a huddle

with the other young penguins.
Scientists who had seen the penguins do
this called it a turtle, but to Zlee it felt a
little like the egg – safe and warm and
sometimes moving. This way and that
the turtle would move to get on a fresh
patch of ice. But now, with the sun up
above the horizon for hours at a time,
everyone was talking about a much
bigger move – the march to the ocean.
“But what is the ocean?” Zlee
asked.
“Where the food is,” said her friend
Neki.
“As deep as the ski is high,” said
Brell.
“And you don’t walk there,” said
another young penguin she couldn’t see.
“You swim!”
“Swim?” said Zlee.
“Yes, like flying,” said an adult
penguin walking by. “In the ocean we’re
free and fast as birds. Just wait, you’ll
see.”
But Zlee felt afraid of this ocean
and that swimming thing. She’d seen
birds fly: they had long strong wings!
What did she have? Short weak
flappers. And if the ocean was as deep
as the sky, wouldn’t you fall forever?
And with the food, someone told her,
came predators.
Predators who ate little penguins!

Finally the day for the return came.

Like the big penguins, the little penguins
walked in a row. And when they came

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to cracks in the ice they jumped in and
swam across. All except Zlee. She went
around. The big penguins laughed.
She’ll swim, they said, when she gets to
the ocean. It’s easy; it’s instinct; she’ll
be fine.
Zlee didn’t think she’d be fine, but
she loved seeing the blue and white
mountains of ice. Inside them lay bright
bubbles of air, like cozy eggs. She loved
Antarctica and she thought there was
nothing better than to be an emperor
penguin.

They smelled it first – the salt, the

plankton. Then they saw it, far in the
distance – the solid blue of open ocean.
The big penguins waddled faster. The
little penguins rushed too, hungry and
eager.
Only Zlee held back. She watched
her friends line up at the edge of a high
glacier and slide or jump one by one
over the edge. She heard the splashes.
She heard the song of her parents, who
had already gone in. They were calling
her to come and swim. It’s easy, they
called; it’s instinct; you’ll be fine.
Zlee didn’t feel fine. But when
every last penguin small or big had
jumped in, she closed her eyes and
walked toward the edge. How far below
was the ocean? She didn’t know. As
deep as the sky, her friends had said.
With predators.
Wondering what predators
sounded and looked like, and how fast
they swam, she stayed awhile longer on
the edge and then finally, still without
opening her eyes, she jumped.

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 The cruise ship had sailed south
from Australia packed with tourists
eager to see Antarctica’s glaciers and, if
they were lucky, the return to the sea of
the emperor penguins.
But they had not been lucky. They
had not seen one blessed penguin.
“Not one, mind you,” said Ella
Barrella to her pet monkey Lou, “not one
blessed penguin.”
“Here comes one now,” thought
the monkey, pointing.
Ella turned. Sure enough there it
was, a small penguin flying through the
air like a kicked soccer ball and landing
smack in the middle of the cruise ship’s
Olympic-size solar-heated swimming
pool.
“My my,” said Ella Barrella.
“Not yours,” thought the monkey,
“but whose penguin it is exactly is hard
to say.”

Zlee kept her eyes closed.

“Not that cold,” she thought, “in
fact, way too warm.”
She opened her eyes then to see a
circle of funny looking pinkish, reddish,
brown and black faces looking down at
her.
The predators! she thought. Had
they eaten the rest of her flock?
Without even realizing she could,
she dove and swam, down, wanting to
go as deep as she could to get away
from those faces. But before she had
even gone twenty feet she hit something

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harder than ice. She hit it so hard it
knocked her out.

On that cruise ship was a girl who

loved penguins. In fact, except perhaps
for monkeys, they were her favorite
animal. She had read all the books
about them in her library and seen all
the movies. But one thing she had
never seen was a real live penguin living
free in nature.
The cruise had been a great
disappointment. Yes the glaciers were
amazing, and the Northern Lights
streaming across the sky something she
would remember forever. But they had
missed the return of the penguins, and
she might never get another chance to
see them.
So when she heard there was a
penguin on board – a real live free one
that had somehow fallen into the
swimming pool, she left her on-board
Judo class and came running to see.
By the time she made it onto the
deck two crew members were lifting the
unconscious penguin into a wooden
crate. She overheard them saying the
zoo in Sydney needed a female emperor
penguin. The captain had already sent
word ahead; a truck from the zoo would
be waiting at the dock.
A truck from the zoo! the girl
thought.
As she watched the crew members
carry the crate off she spotted the pet
monkey. He had a collar around his
neck with a leash attached to it. When
she’d seen him before she’d thought he
looked so cute, and happy.

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 He didn’t look cute and happy now.
He seemed to feel her looking at
him, and looked back. His little hands,
so like a person’s, went up to his collar
and tugged at it. Then he looked at the
crate as it disappeared down into the
hold of the ship.

When Zlee woke up she thought

she was inside the egg again, dark and
warm. Then she remembered the ring
of faces, and hitting the floor of that hot
hot water.
She must have been eaten. She
must be in the belly of a predator, one
that had also swallowed this thing she
was in.
Just then she saw, through the
cracks in the boards, a light, coming
closer, a light much smaller than the sun
and bouncing up and down a little. Then
it made a sound!
“Little penguin? Little penguin?
Are you all right?”
The sound gave Zlee a good
feeling. She edged up to a crack and
looked out. There, a little bigger than
herself, was one of the strange beakless
creatures.
“I’m here to help you, don’t be
scared.”
The little girl had brought a
crowbar. With this she pried a board off
the box and the little penguin walked
out.

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 Part II

Some escapes can happen without

the help of a monkey. This isn’t one of
them.
Once Ella Barrella was asleep Lou
slipped quietly out of his collar and just
as quietly out the cabin door. Having
memorized the maze of corridors and
stairways, he soon found his way out
onto the deck of the ship.
It was very late. The dancers had
gone from the dance hall, and only a few
crew members stood watch in the cabin
room at the top of the ship.
In the sky to the south the
Northern Lights put on a fabulous show
of streaming and shimmering reds and
greens.
Like many monkeys, Lou could
read the minds of children, and some
adults. So he knew the little girl wanted
to help the penguin escape, but he
didn’t know if she had a plan.

“Okay,” the girl was saying as they

slowly climbed the stairs, “here’s my
plan. We borrow one of the lifeboats,
and I row you back to that cliff – it’s
probably not too far back – and you can
find your flock, okay?”
She turned to look at Zlee, who
was looking down at her black clawed
feet. Feet not made for stairs.
“Well, that’s my plan anyway.”
Finally they made it to the deck.
No one was out there. The reason no
one was out there was the extreme cold.
The girl pulled her hat down and her

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collar up, but it didn’t help much.
Zlee, on the other hand, finally felt
comfortable. And when she saw the
streaming lights in the sky they made
her so homesick she began to sing the
special song her parents had taught her.
“Quiet!” said the girl. “You’ll wake
someone up.”
But Zlee kept on until the end of
the song, though as far as she knew her
parents were dead, eaten by the
predator whose belly this little girl had
saved her from.
But saved her for what?

A crew member heard the song.

He came down the stairs from the upper
decks to see a girl and a penguin in one
of the lifeboats. And if that wasn’t
amazing enough, a monkey stood
turning the winch that lowered lifeboat
over the side of the ship.
“Hey!” he called, running down the
steps. “You can’t do that!”
But they were doing it.
“Faster,” the girl called to the
monkey. But when she looked down at
the cold choppy water she really wanted
to say “Stop!” and “Wind us back up!”
“It’s okay,” she said to the
penguin. “I’ll just row you toward the
lights.”
Zlee looked where she pointed.
The streams of light seemed like the
arms of home reaching out for her. Was
she the last emperor penguin left alive?
Would she never huddle in the turtle
again with all her friends and cousins?
The sadness made her start her song
again, louder than before.

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 The crewman shoved the monkey
aside and began to wind the lifeboat
back in.
“I’m gonna regret this,” the
monkey thought, “but I’m doing it
anyway.”
What Lou did was stick his tail into
the turning winch.
“You jammed it!” yelled the
crewman.
“So I did,” Lou thought. “Feels just
like that time an elephant stepped on
it.”

In the swaying lifeboat half way

down the side of the cruise ship, Zlee
and the little girl heard something. It
was like the little penguin’s song, but
stronger, with two voices, two voices
coming closer.
Zlee looked down and saw her
parents! Her parents, and her friends,
Neki and Brell. Dozens of penguins
swimming in circles, darting and
jumping as if they were dolphins, and all
calling to her.
“You heard me!”
“We heard you! Now jump, quick.”
The girl saw them too.
“Jump,” she said, pushing Zlee to
the side of the lifeboat.
Above them were two crewman
now winding the lifeboat up the side.
“Jump!” thought Lou, wishing he
could talk, thinking it as loud as he
could.
Why didn’t Zlee jump?
She was still afraid. Why, the last

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time she jumped she had landed in hot
water, smashed her head into a wall,
and woke up in the belly of a predator!
But actually, she realized, all those
bad things happened to her not because
she jumped, but because she hesitated
to jump.
Hesitating, she realized, is bad.
Waiting too long is bad. Fear is bad. So!
She jumped. She jumped over the
side of the lifeboat and flew down like a
kicked soccer ball into water that was
exactly the right temperature.
Her eyes wide open the whole
time.

The next morning, when the angry

captain let her go with a warning, the
girl went back out on deck and looked at
the northern lights.
One very long flame of green
seemed to reach across the sky to her,
and she thought she heard the song of
the little penguin who had finally jumped
in.

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 Part III

“Sorry you didn’t get to see your

flock of emperor penguins,” her older
brother said the next day when he met
her at the ship. “I got your e-mail.”
“Oh but I did,” she said back. “I
saw them last night.”
“Yeah, in your dreams,” he said.
“Oh no,” she said, “for real.”
Then she told him the whole story.
Of course he didn’t believe her. But at
that moment the crewman who had
tried to stop the escape passed by. She
asked him to say the part of the story he
had seen, and he did, even the part
about the monkey jamming the winch
with his tail.
“See?” said the girl, when the
crewman went.
“I still don’t believe it,” said her
brother. “You two just got together and
made that up.”
But then Ella Barrella came by with
her pet monkey on her shoulder.
“Thanks,” the girl said to him, and
he tipped his little red pet-monkey hat.
“That’s the monkey,” said the girl.
“I still don’t – ” her brother started
to say. Then he saw the monkey’s tail.
It had two bends in it, so that it was
shaped like a “Z.”
“That’s the tail that saved the
penguin,” the girl said. “And if you don’t
believe me now – ”
“I guess I do believe you now,” her
brother admitted. “I just don’t believe
you would really have tried to row that
penguin back to Antarctica. Would you
have?”
“I’m not sure,” said the girl.

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“Maybe being a hundred percent willing
to do something hard to help someone is
as good as doing it.”
“Maybe it is,” he said, starting the
van to take them home. “Maybe it is.”

The days grow shorter. It’s time

for the mother penguins to begin the
march back to the sea and eat, leaving
their eggs in the warm pouches of the
fathers. Before they go they sing a
special song so they can find each other
again.
Singing to her mate, watching his
beautiful rose-colored neck curve as he
sings back to her, Zlee remembers the
girl and the monkey and the time when
she was so afraid to jump. So long ago.
She wishes there was a way to thank
that girl now, a way for a special song to
reach her, wherever she is.

When the females come back, the

eggs are hatched. Everywhere brand
new penguins poke out from their
father’s pouches. So hungry! After they
have fed their chicks and greeted their
mates, the penguins just back from the
ocean notice something else that’s new.
Men! Two men in orange suits
carrying strange three-legged machines
that they point at the penguins.
Zlee and her friend Brell walk over
to investigate. They aren’t afraid. All
the predators live in the ocean, and
besides, these big orange things seem
just to be looking.
“What do you suppose they’re

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doing?” Brell says.
“I don’t know,” says Zlee, poking
at the machine thing with her beak.
Something made her want to sing her
special song, so she did.
“Hey,” said one of the camera men
to the other, “listen! Let’s try to record
that.”

In Sydney Australia, the girl who

loved penguins went to a movie with her
brother. She was bigger now, and he’d
been away at college. Whenever he
came back to visit they liked to do
something together. The movie was
March of the Penguins.
As they were waiting for it to start
her brother asked if the story she’d told
him about the penguin on the cruise
ship was really truly true.
“Every word of it,” she said. “Why
that little penguin might even be one of
the ones in this movie, grown up.”
“I doubt that,” said her brother.
“Anyway, how would you recognize him?
They all look the same.”
“First of all, he’s a her, I’m sure.
And second of all, I just know I’ll
recognize her, somehow. Wait and see.”
The lights went down and the
movie began.

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