Jeanne Willis - Penguin Pandemonium

“Yes, we could go to the gift shop and buy mints,” huffed Rory. “You’re squiddy too, you know.”

As they arrived at the pool, their argument was suddenly cut short. There was a strange metal object on a pole in the penguin enclosure and it was pointing straight at them.

“Duck!” hissed Rory.

“Chicken!” pouted Blue.

“No… duck! Keep your head down,” whispered Rory, pulling her behind the nearest rock.

“It’s a gun! They aren’t going to release us into the wild, they’re going to shoot us!”

For some while, the two of them huddled together quivering, waiting for the bullets to start. They might have stayed there all day if Muriel hadn’t wandered over with Hatty and Brenda and got the wrong idea.

“Ooh, look girls!” she sang. “Ro-ry and Bloopy sitting in a tree, K. I. S. S. I. N. G.! It’s not even breeding season.”

“We are not sitting in a tree!” insisted Rory. “Get down before they blow your heads off.”

Muriel preened herself and didn’t move.

“Oh my cod, he’s been drinking seawater,” she sneered. “He’s gone crazy.”

She looked down her beak at Rory.

“Bloop, why are you even hanging out with a boy?”

“I’m not ‘hanging out’,” said Blue. “I just don’t want to be shot by that gun.”

Muriel, Hatty and Brenda threw up their flippers and cackled.

“What’s so funny?” said Rory.

“It’s not a gun, dummy. It’s a camera,” said Muriel, posing in front of it. “Smile, we’re on Penguin Cam. Preen yourself, Bloop, you look like you lost in a pillow fight.”

“How do you know it’s a camera?” said Rory.

Muriel looked at him as if he was completely thick.

“Radio Brown Bear, Orson and Ursie, told us. They heard the zookeeper talking to Savannah about it while we were all watching you screw things up at Paulie’s.”

Rory stood up and stared at the weird contraption overhanging the enclosure. Now that he’d studied it properly, he could see that it had a lens similar to the ones visitors used to point at him when he was doing stunts. He scratched his head with his foot and tried to make sense of it.

“Penguin Cam? What on earth is that? What does it do?” wondered Blue out loud. Muriel stopped posing with Hatty and Brenda and pulled a face.

“Oh my cod, she doesn’t even know what Penguin Cam is,” she snickered. “You really need to get with the programme, Bloop.”

Blue screwed up her beak and glared at her.

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