Jeanne Willis - Penguin Pandemonium

“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.