Dave The Penguin (7 page)

Dave didn’t just throw the tape
away, that wouldn’t be very ecologically friendly, he just put it
in the bottom of his rucksack, and got out his Meatloaf tape
again.

He stood up, and waddled
back to his patch to look after the egg again, resembling in the
twilight, a somewhat pedestrianized
and
slightly overweight
Bat Out
of Hell
.

If you
were kind…. and squinted a lot.

It was six o’clock in the
morning and Dave was just in the middle of a dream.

He had programmed his mind to
set an alarm off in his head, and it had gone off as it was
supposed to, bang on time.

Dave
had never worked out how it did that, it was a real
mystery. Especially as his higher self or his consciousness thing
knew less about clocks than he did.

However, when asking his
‘spiritual guide’ to set his mental wake up alarm for the morning,
he had neglected to specify the day of the week, and consequently a
whole week had gone missing, somewhere.

Dave hadn’t slept at all well
through with all that sunshine, and his dreams had been vivid and
dramatic and memorable. Which was always an indication that
something was going on somewhere, and not just in his head.

He opened an eye wearily, and
looked forward, which was usually the easiest direction.

Standing a few feet in front of
him was a large ball of grey fluff, with a beak, feet, and two
black expectant eyes looking straight at him.

It was jigging from side
to side in a keen sort of ‘motivational’ manner…. Dave just looked
at it, blankly.

It was also at that point that
Dave was surprised at how cold and draughty his feet felt. It was
one of those hypnogogic disoriented moments, where you were trying
to make sense of a situation, and get a perceiving grasp on a
reality.

A stark harsh unprepared
reality feeling, that you had been thrown too many large spanners
at once.

He tried the ‘closing the eyes
and opening them and blinking again’, thing.

It didn’t work, it was still
there, jigging and beaming.

His brain was trying to
form coherence in a logical progressive lateral manner, and started
off on the
was it male or
female
thing, with the first of the 20
questions. Was it a girl penguin thing or a boy penguin thing?
Somehow he couldn’t think of the gender collective name for
penguins.

Why couldn’t he think of it,
what was the term ?

He had to somehow come up with
the right gender name, bring it to mind, or the thing in front of
him couldn’t be given a name, and subsequently it wouldn’t
exist.

So, for the moment, he decided
to call the thing ‘IT’ - just to be safe. IT was still there. Dave
squinted, but it still didn’t help.

Everything was still all too
much, so he closed his eyes again, just to rest for a moment, just
for a five more minutes, just ease himself back gently into the
dream he was in before.

His dream had been nice
soft and fluffy, welcoming, and he mentally went to wrap himself
back up in his quilt
, and press
the
Snooze
button on the bedside table in his mind.

He pressed it – but the
button wasn’t the same, somehow it had changed, now it had the ‘F’
word on it, in big flashing illuminated letters. Which then set off
a different alarm, a sort of panic alarm, and all sorts of things
happened at once.

His body and brain kicked in
the door of his mind’s bedroom. His eyes opened wide, adrenaline
flowing. His heart raced, and he stood bolt upright, breathing
hard, and stared at the now grinning face in front of him.

“Hello Dad!” IT said.

Dave was doing the maths in
rapid jerky equations.

A few moments later, Dave gave
a tentative nervous wave, and smiled, awkwardly.

IT waved back. Dave looked
left, and then right for more reality. But there were no more
handles with which to grab.

A moment later, Dave’s wife
arrived with some fish in her beak, and without looking at Dave she
bent forward and posted the fish into the now open mouth of ……
IT.

This had clearly been going on
for some time. Surprisingly though, she didn’t give Dave any of the
‘you useless father’ looks that he was expecting, she just looked
at him and smiled and whispered something to the… to the… chick,
which giggled, and then she wandered off again.

Over the next few weeks he
would be let off fatherly duties altogether, which in the state he
was in was just as well.

He tried, but thankfully it was
a good thing they had chick nurseries these days, where all the
chicks could be grouped together in the middle of the colony, safe
and protected, and away from harm, and useless fathers like
him.

Dave couldn’t see why they
couldn’t do things the way the turtles did, what was wrong with
just dumping the eggs on a beach covering them over and legging it?
Then there was no responsibility, no having to look back, and no
school fees.

Mind you turtles were very
stupid creatures; perhaps there was something in the nurturing
process, or something to do with warm sand rather than the only
option here which was snow. What was wrong with the concept of sink
or swim? All the turtles he knew were good at both.

However, penguins thought that
bringing up their young properly was a very responsible thing, and
everyone was very clear about what had to be done and how to do
it.

Dave just wished he was better
at it, and had more energy, and that he didn’t feel so guilty.

He remembered seeing with
everyone else a natural history documentary with a Rockhopper
penguin in it that had adopted a group of stray Emperor penguin
chicks. It had, surprisingly, protected them from an evil Petrel,
and had then gathered them together. However it then started
herding them, pushing and encouraging the chicks, onward, and over
to the edge of the ice into the sea.

There had been gasps. It was
obvious to Dave, and all the other penguins watching the
documentary, that the chicks couldn’t swim, they hadn’t grown their
waterproof feathers yet, and they would drown with their soft
fluffy ones.

Young emperor penguins should
never be made to go into the purifying water, and should always be
allowed to make their own choice of jumping in, if they wanted to,
when they were older and ready.

This didn’t happen with
Rockhoppers, they were pushed in to the water from an early age,
but this wasn’t this Rockhoppers flock, and the same rules didn’t
apply. Instead of leading them to safety, he was leading them to be
drowned, through blind ignorance.

There were screams of fury
directed at the screen.

Luckily the chicks had all
survived but there was still outrage, and it nearly caused a war.
If their colony had been any closer, and not the other side of the
sea lions, there probably would have been one.

The Rockhopper was
probably just doing what it thought was right, protecting the
chicks and getting them into the water, but that was always the
risk when you did things that you thought were obvious, when you
didn’t understand what you were doing….. The implications could be
catastrophic.

There was certainly too much of
that going on in the world.

Luckily IT’s mother
seemed to know what to do, and it wouldn’t be long before the
swimming lessons would start, and IT would be away, and he wouldn’t
feel so guilty any more.

It had been a very foggy
morning, but frankly that wasn’t really much of an excuse.

Dave had woken up early
and had set off towards the sea to do some fishing, or at least
that’s where he thought he was going. It seemed like a good idea to
get an early ‘fish in’, while they were still waking up, and before
everyone else got there.

It was only about an hour
later, wandering through the fog, that he started to think that the
sea was, well, much further away than he remembered. But with his
unfailing sense of direction he knew he was going the right way, so
he carried on.

One foot after the other, on
and on he walked.

After a while he just relaxed,
knowing he would be there at some point, eventually.

It was all OK, besides he could
use the time to think, contemplate, relax, and just chill, and lose
any track of time. It was fairly easy really, there being no
night-time here in the summer. He just left his penguin body device
in ‘homing’ autopilot, and carried on walking.

He had his shades on and was
listening to his Genesis albums through his headphones.

Three weeks later Dave’s feet
were starting to ache a bit, so he stopped.

Sweat was also starting to drip
down his forehead in the heat, so he removed his sunshades to wipe
his face. It was at that point that he realised that it wasn’t
foggy at all. His glasses were the only things fogged up - aside
from his brain - and had misted up from all the dried sea
spray.

Easy mistake
to make
, he thought.

Bright sunshine shone out on
the open snow plain, and he realised that he was in the middle of
nowhere. He started to panic now. He had no idea where he was. All
he knew was that he had been going completely in the wrong
direction, away from the sea rather than towards it, South rather
than North.

THIS WAS BAD!

He swallowed hard. He was lost,
a long way from home, and on his own, and the batteries had run out
on his tape player. Not good for a penguin.

He took a moment to calm down
and looked around; there was nothing, not even a mirage to lead him
astray. It was just white and flat, in every direction.

After about ten minutes of
patiently standing hoping the problem would go away, he noticed a
flash in the distance, a brief reflection from something, just for
an instant.

With no other options open to
him, he headed off in the direction of the flash.

An hour later a strange
structure came into view.

It was a collection of giant
silver and grey half-buried tin cans. They had long twigs poking
out from them into the air and long bits of wire attached. There
were also lots of parallel line tracks in the snow all around them.
The tracks appeared to have been made by a jet ski, specifically a
ski-doo MXZ model, but he couldn’t be absolutely sure at this
range.

There was also a very large
stick with wires on it some way away that was dozens of times
higher than Dave, and they seemed to be giving off a buzzing noise
that made his head feel funny, spinny, like he didn’t know where he
was.

He didn’t like it.

As he got closer he could see
the tracks went off towards some larger, square, brown and white
shaped objects further on, and also to a big silver dome thing, as
if the moon had fallen into the snow. There were also lots of
brightly coloured national flags flying, which Dave deduced, had
obviously been stolen from ships.

There was also a silver ball
thing on a post, with red and white eels spiralling around the
post.

Dave decided he needed a closer
look. It was very quiet so he guessed everyone must be off
fishing.

He carefully waddled up to the
nearest giant tin thing, stretched up on his toes, and looked
inside through one of the square clear ice things on the side.

The inside was very
complicated; there were lots of things that he didn’t recognise,
lots of shapes he didn’t understand, so he couldn’t see them in his
mind, as they didn’t make sense to him.

In one area, on a sheet of flat
wood, raised up high, there were some penguins in a clear ice box
with a headlamp above them. There were two Chinstrap penguins and a
Rockhopper. Dave didn’t like Rockhoppers, they were aggressive and
rude.

One had shouted at him once and
made a rude gesture at him, which he had never forgotten, so from
then on he made a point of leaving them alone.

Dave was going to wait until it
saw him, and then he was going to get the rude gesture in first.
But it looked like it was asleep.

Lucky for
him
thought Dave, and then he felt a bit
guilty, and a bit sad for it.

The whole area inside seemed to
be full of biological things; green things, like seaweed, but
growing upwards. Fish and whales that he recognised were there, but
flat, and on the wall. It seemed a strange place to be trying to
keep, look at, and grow living things in.

Dave waddled around to the
front of the hut and looked for a way in to see if there was anyone
who could help.

He knocked on the door with his
beak and waited. There was no reply, but he could hear a lot of
laughter coming from inside. They seemed to be coming closer to the
door so he politely stepped back.

Suddenly the door burst open
and several people emerged carrying buckets of ice water. Dave was
anxious at first and wandered what he had done to offend them.

He stepped to the side but they
seemed not to have noticed him at all, they were far too interested
in themselves, talking and laughing. Two of the men had no clothes
on their top halves.

The two men then proceeded to
kneel down, and were handed the buckets of ice water. They then
poured the water over their heads, screamed, and everyone laughed,
and took photos.

Then they all ran back inside
quickly, straight past Dave, leaving him with his wing still
raised, poised to ask a question. The door slammed closed.