"The Flying Penguin"
Written by Blake P. Southwood 2004
copyright Blake Southwood
Chapter 1 Antarctica
An igloo was half buried in snow near a large mountain
on the southern tip of Antarctica as the temperature continued
to drop throughout the night.
The temperature outside the igloo was one hundred degrees below zero. The small iceberg that the igloo was situated on was drifting in the ocean thirty miles off the coast of Antarctica. Craaaaaaack. “What was that?” Sabrina the penguin thought. The wind was howling very loudly outside of her little igloo during the night. The wind howled loudly throughout the night. The wind made funny noises as it buffeted the sides of the iceberg that she and her family were drifting on for the past few days. Sabrina didn’t want to go outside into the frigid cold, especially at night
when the wind was much stronger. She pulled down her cover as she contemplated getting out of bed, but soon
started to shiver and pulled the blankets back over herself. Even though she had two pairs of socks on, her feet were still only barely warm. Inside of her igloo was a toasty fifty degrees .... above zero.
She thought that she must be dreaming when she heard the loud wind and strange cracking noise. Sabrina
quickly went back to sleep, as she buried herself under her covers up to her beak.
She didn’t hear her parents squabbling in the
next room of the igloo and thought that they must be asleep too. So
she didn’t bother to wake her parents. Usually, she could hear them snoring, but not this time. Sabrina thought
about rousing her parents to see if they knew what the loud cracking noise was, but soon she fell back into a
deep sleep.
In the morning, Sabrina, a baby Magellenic penguin, yawned and stretched her wings out and slowly emerged
from her igloo. The snow that fell during the night was more than a meter deep. She clambered outside of
her igloo to a foggy morning with just a hint of a few snowflakes still falling from the sky. The snowflakes were so beautiful and much bigger then what she had become accustomed too. Sabrina sighed and admired the beauty of the
snowfall for a few minutes, though it was still rather cold outside. She had gone to bed early the night before, because
she had a soar throught and an ear ache. Her parents were still at their friend's igloo having tea and scones and discussing what part of Antarctica to ride this iceberg to, before getting off.
Sabrina returned to her family's igloo and decided to greet her parents on this splendid winter morning. Sabrinia was still so excited about having the igloo to themselves. Penguins don't normally live in igloos. Her family chanced
upon this iceberg that had an igloo on it. Sabrina knocked on her parent’s bedroom door, but she couldn’t wake them up. Knock, Knock, Knock,
as she tapped their door with her wing.
“Wake up,” she insisted. “Wake up.” There was no answer. Sabrina soon became concerned that her parents
must have gone fishing early in the morning, before she awoke. Sabrina looked in the hallway of the igloo and saw
their fishing poles so she instantly knew that that couldn't be it. With concern awash over her, she finally opened her parents' bedroom door, after much reservation, and found her parents bedroom empty. They were gone. She thought to herself “Where can they be?”
Sabrina waddled outside and decided she should at least look for her parents. She waddled through
the fog and felt some cold ocean water splash on her face. The icy water beaded down her black wings and
quickly froze as it fell to the icy ground. The fog was so thick that she could barely see her
wings in front of her face. Sabrina nearly stepped off the edge of the iceberg, which she couldn’t
see because of the thick fog. Emerging from the dark blue water a six meter long Great White
shark passed by slowly just below her with just its one meter tall grey dorsal fin was visible
above the water. Sabrina shouted “Go away, you. Leave me alone.” The shark splashes the icy water
onto Sabrina with its great swishing tail and Sabrina backed away from the edge of the drifting iceberg
that she is stranded on. Sabrina gasped as she noticed that half of the iceberg had broken off,
obviously during the night, which explains the loud cracking noise she heard while she was asleep
that awoke her during the bitterly cold night. The iceberg is not very large, and in fact it only
a few meters tall, but is at least twenty meters wide and fifty meters long. Compared to the
size of other icebergs, it was actually quite small. Most icebergs have only ten percent of their mass
above water, but Sabrina knew that this iceberg was only ten meters deep and so it would bob up and down
quite noticeably in the choppy ocean waters. Sometimes Sabrina would feel like she was on a great ship
and get sea sick.
Sabrina waddled around the iceberg and discovered that all of the other penguins were gone and she
is all alone. Sabrina is scared and starts shaking in fear. She's worried that something dreadful
has happened to her parents, and her friends that were also living on the iceberg with her.
Sabrina thinks, “Why haven’t my parents and friends come back to get me? Did they all leave so
suddenly that they forgot about me?” Sabrina calls out their names but nobody answers. The
fog is still so thick that she can’t see more than just a few meters in front of herself.
Sabrina sits down on the icy snow and decides that she needs to think about what to do next.
The air is still now, the wind has ceased, and the weather seems eerie to her. Sabrina thinks,
“It is so quiet now that I can hear myself think.” Even the ocean water has suddenly become
calm. This is quite strange she thought.
Sabrina becomes increasingly worried after a few hours pass. Her parents are still gone and she
is becoming more frightened as she sits alone on the drifting iceberg which is being carried by
the ocean’s strong currents. All she hears is complete silence, in fact, it’s so quiet she now
can even hear herself breathe. The fog from her breath is visible in the frigid air. The fog
begins to clear, but at the same time it begins to snow again with big fluffy snowflakes, the
largest that she’s ever seen before. One snowflake lands on her beak. She flicks the snowflake
off with a quick brush with her wing tip. Sabrina hears a noise in the stillness but sees
that it’s just a pod of eight Orcas swimming by about forty meters in the distance with their large dorsal
fins and streamlined bodies gliding through the choppy water. The Orcas pass from her view within a few
minutes. Sabrina realizes that she needs to take action and do something to advertise her presence on the
drifting iceberg to get help. The revelation that she is stranded on this iceberg is becoming more apparent
with each passing hour and she starts to fear the worst about her parents. There has been no sign of them
as she patiently waits for their return. They have never left her alone like this before. She begins to
think up a plan. Sabrina hears another crack. “Oh NO.” She said. “Not again.” The cracking noise continues
and soon she can see that one third of the floating iceberg, that she’s on, has just broken off. Sabrina
starts to worry even more than before. She looks around and sees the shark is still nearby, swimming
alongside her iceberg. The shark’s dorsal fin jutting out of the water shows his presence, and this
time she saw his eyes, and Sabrina thought about throwing a snowball at the shark, but decided that
he was too far away. Sabrina’s eyes are full of fright. “I wonder if I’ll make it through this coming
night.” Sabrina said in a resolute manner.
Then, Sabrina thought that if she can make snowballs then she could make
a snowman, this got her to thinking and an idea started to crystallize.
Sabrina decides to build a giant snow penguin which will definitely attract attention, since no one has
ever seen such a great towering penguin before. After about forty minutes she has managed to build a
three meter tall snow penguin. She decides that this most assuredly will draw attention to her iceberg
and catch the attention of other passing penguins in the area that might have seen or heard from her
parents. Sabrina’s stomach grumbles, for she hasn’t eaten all day. An hour goes by. Sabrina here’s
another grumble and at first thinks that it’s her stomach, and then the grumble turns into a cracking
noise. The iceberg she’s floating on cracks in half and now her iceberg is just ten meters square and
it’s obviously breaking up. Sabrina swallows hard as she realizes that the circumstances are starting
to look grim. She realizes that she’s running out of time and the wind has begun to pick up and it might
blow her snow penguin down which is her distress signal. Two more hours pass with nary a noise.
Sabrina notices that the shark seems to be gone that has been following her all day, she lets out
a sigh of relief. A couple of curious dolphins swim over and see the humongous white penguin and
swim over to investigate and take a closer look. The dolphins cautiously approach and see the
stranded penguin and motion for Sabrina to hop on their backs with a wave of their flippers and
a few vocalizations that sounds like a funny clicking noise. The dolphins swim closer to
approach Sabrina. Sabrina decides to climb onto the back of the larger dolphin and ride the
dolphin like a Jet ski to the main land. The other dolphin swims alongside to keep company.
Suddenly, the annoying shark reappears and his dorsal fin is clearly visible and he is approaching
very rapidly. The horrible shark comes towards them at full speed wooshing through the water
with his jaws open, but soon leaves after the dolphins blast the beastly shark with their
high frequency sonar. The two dolphins swim rapidly like torpedoes on the surface of the
water and Sabrina’s feathers are flush against her body due to the speed that they are
travelling. The two dolphins seem to possess an endless supply of energy and seem to swim
effortlessly through the choppy water littered with chunks of ice and slush. Within an hour
the two dolphins and Sabrina arrive at the US Outpost #7 near the Ross Ice Shelf in Southern
Antarctica. The dolphins have taken other lost
marine life to the US Outpost and know that it’s a safe place to take them.
Sabrina climbs off of the larger dolphin and thanks both of the dolphins for rescuing her from the
dwindling iceberg. She shakes the fin of each of the dolphins with her wings and pats each of
them on the head in a sign of affection and gratitude. The two dolphins swim around for a while
and make some high frequency chipper squeaks with their throats and then disappear back into the
cold, deep ocean. Sabrina turns to wave goodbye and the two dolphins both leap out of the ocean and
sore five meters into the air before diving back into the frigid ocean.
Sabrina waddles towards the front entrance of the US Outpost three hundred meters from where the main
land meets the ocean and with her wing knocks on the front door of the rectangular building that stands
four meters tall. There is answer. Sabrina immediately worries, what if there is no one home. What will
I do? The men inside of the Research Station don’t hear Sabrina knocking because she didn’t knock very
hard. Darkness is falling quickly and the stars are beginning to emerge and Sabrina knows full well that
for survival sake needs to get out of the cold, since she doesn’t have enough time to make an igloo by herself.
Sabrina is feeling the cold air more and decides that drastic measures are in order and kicks the door
as hard as she can three times with her foot. The door instantly opens and two large men with beards
and glasses look down on her and smile and invite her inside. “Come in little one.” One of the men said
to her. She waddles inside where it is warm and there’s carpet on the ground. Having never seen a human
before, she thinks that they are funny looking creatures. What is most striking about them is
that they don’t have any feathers, nor wings, but they have very large feet. And they have funny looking
beaks with holes in them. She later learns that these are their noses. Most of these humans seem to have
bad eyesight and therefore wear glasses.
These humans, a species that she’s never seen before and only heard about the legend and myth of
the creatures that look funny, but are so ingenious at building contraptions and odd flying machines,
called airplanes, that she herself has seen fly over since she first hatched out of her egg just a year
ago. These humans bring her fish to eat and water to drink. They treat her as a friend and she soon feels
chummy with all of them and they pamper her and take care of her. She spends the summer with the researches
at this US Outpost and enjoys going on rides on snowmobiles most of all. One of the woman researchers
teaches Sabrina how to play ping pong which she takes a strong liking too. Sabrina stands on her side
of the table and holds the paddle with her wing and covers her side of the table quite well. Sabrina
can beat most of the researchers now in ping pong. Sabrina was just starting to really feel at home
when suddenly she learned some news.
The researcher from the Zoological society, a woman from Sweden, is heading back to her job at
the San Francisco Zoo in California and asked Sabrina if she would like to go too. Sabrina thinks
about her parents and friends and realizes that a little travel could be good for her and make her
more worldly, though she’ll leave a note for them.
Sabrina agrees that she would like to accompany the research biologist back to San Francisco Zoo and
stay there for a while. After staying at the Research Outpost for a full year Sabrina enjoys the company
of these human creatures, and has also taken a liking to late night tv, but most especially likes nibbling
on doritos and watching reruns of the tv show “Northern Exposure.” Though she can understand English
now, she can’t speak it, but she can write English fairly well to communicate when she needs to. Her
favorite musical instrument is the violin. Sabrina is an excellent student and also enjoys reading
newspapers on the web at the Research Station’s Internet cafe. Sabrina leaves her new email address
at the outpost at the internet cafe for her parents to get in contact with her at Sabrina.penguin@sfzoo.org.
Friday, November 23, 2012
Chapter 1 Antarctica Freeze
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