“Here, you two,” Joel said, lying on his stomach so he was eye level with them. “Come say hi.”
The penguins waddled over awkwardly, passing right by Joel’s head and wedging into the space between his neck and the floor, one on either side. Joel laughed. “You guys want to feel like you’re under an adult penguin’s belly, don’t you?”
“Oork! Oork!”
Fuzzy feathers tickled Joel’s throat. It was all he could manage not to laugh out loud.
The door creaked open. Joel didn’t want to disturb the nesting penguins, so he didn’t dare look up to see who was coming in. He was relieved to see Nina’s sneakers coming toward him, not his mother’s loafers.
Nina set down a plate of tuna fish. “We’re lucky Mom is so distracted by moving in,” she said. “She didn’t even notice I was making a plate of plain tuna. Come on, birds, it’s lunchtime!”
The chicks wriggled out from under Joel’s throat. They waddled over to the plate, brought their eyes close to the fish, then looked up at Nina and Joel expectantly.
“What are they waiting for?” Joel asked.
“In the books from the library, it looked like the parents fed the chicks.”
“I don’t remember that part. How do they feed them? It’s not like penguins have hands to hold fish.”
“No, they… you know, regurgitate.” Nina opened her mouth and did a very believable impression of vomiting.
“Gross.”
Nina picked up a piece of tuna and dangled it over the chicks’ heads. They opened their mouths and bounced. “Oork! Oork!” She dropped the morsel into one mouth, and the chick happily gummed it down.
Joel sat up, selected a piece of tuna, and dropped it into the other chick’s mouth. That bird, too, eagerly swallowed the food.
“We should call them Hungry and Eat-y,” Nina proposed.
“The Popper Penguins were named after famous travelers,” Joel said. “We don’t know if these are boys or girls yet, but what if we named them Ernest, for Ernest Shackleton, who went to the South Pole, and… and—”
“Mae, for Mae Jemison!” Nina said. “She went to space.”
“Perfect.”
“That’ll be the more energetic one. Your shyer one can be Ernest.”
Joel picked Ernest up and looked into his eyes. “You can be as shy as you want. We’ll take good care of you.”
“Kids!” their mother called from downstairs. “You promised to help me, since you’re not actually sick!”
“We’ll take these two down to the basement and then go help Mom,” Joel whispered.
They each scooped a chick into their T-shirts and hustled downstairs.
They opened the basement door—which squeaked. “Kids, now! I’m not messing around,” their mom called.
“Sorry, Mom!” They deposited the chicks, their fleece blankets, hot-water bottles, and tuna fish in the middle of the basement floor, then raced upstairs.
As Joel closed the basement door, all he could hear were the bewildered oorks of the chicks.
“I don’t think we’ll be able to pull this off for too long,” Nina whispered to Joel as they rushed toward their mother.
“I don’t know if we’ll be able to pull it off for a day,” Joel replied.
It would turn out to be closer to ten minutes.
THE WAY OF ALL GOLDFISH
THE FIRST TASK of the day was to finish unloading the moving truck so their mother could return it. Each time Joel went to get a box, he tried to pick one that was labeled BASEMENT, so he could check on Ernest and Mae. But Mrs. Popper wasn’t playing along. “We should save the basement boxes for the end, kids. That’s the last priority. Start with the bedroom stuff, so we can get this house feeling like a home.”
“If only she knew,” Nina said under her breath as she dragged a floor lamp through the front door, passing right under the old PENGUIN PAVILION sign.
Joel put his hands on his hips and looked around the moving truck. “Mom, where’d you wind up putting the goldfish?”
“Winkles and Joffrey?” she said, wiping her brow. “I think it might have been the basement.”
Joel nearly dropped the box he was holding. “You put them in the basement?” He ran out of the truck and into the house. “Nina! The goldfish are in the basement!”
“So what?” Nina said. Then she saw Joel’s horrified expression. “Oh! The basement!”
They threw open the door and ran down the steps.
They were just in time to see the goldfishes’ tails disappear down the penguin’s open beaks, one in each. Slurp, slurp. “Oork, oork!”
The chicks waddled forward and back, turning in circles and raising their little wings, clearly pleased with themselves.
Nina stood openmouthed. “Goodbye, Winkles.”
Joel put his arm around her shoulders. “Goodbye, Joffrey.”
Emboldened, Mae hopped up onto the first step and then the second. Ernest looked at Mae in wonderment, then tried to hop onto the first step. It didn’t go nearly as well. He hit the step mid-belly and then fell back to the floor, astonished. “Oork! Oork!” he cried.
Joel rushed to cradle him, while Nina played defense, positioning her feet along a step to prevent Mae from jumping any higher, looking just like a soccer goalie trying to block a shot.
Mae might have been only a few hours old, but she was already clever. She waddled left on her step and then took a surprise waddle to the right before jumping, skirting right by Nina.
Then Mae was up and out of the basement door and into the rest of the house.
“Oh no, oh no,” Nina cried as she scrambled after the fast-moving chick.
The baby penguin was already in the kitchen, pecking at the corner of a cardboard moving box, when Nina caught up to her. She scooped up the cuddly little chick. “You have to stay in the basement, naughty Mae!”
Nina heard a loud gasp. She turned and nearly dropped the chick in surprise.
There, mouth open in a wide O of astonishment, was Mrs. Popper.
GROUNDED?
IT WAS A very somber family meeting. Or it would have been a very somber family meeting, if two penguin chicks hadn’t been wandering around the dining room table. Mae and Ernest oorked with curiosity, frequently lifting their wings up and down until someone cuddled them.
“I cannot believe that you kids thought it was okay to lie to me,” Mrs. Popper was saying. She had to break off, though, when Ernest stood in front of her and fixed her with an intense stare. “What do you want?”
“He wants you to hold him,” Joel explained.
Mrs. Popper nervously picked up the chick and cradled him in the crook of her elbow. Her expression melted. “Is that better, Ernest? Anyway, what was I saying, oh, right, I’m very mad at you for thinking you could lie to your very own mother—what do you want? Are you hungry, little Ernest? Aww!”
“They really love tuna fish,” Nina said quietly.
“Well, we should stock up,” Mrs. Popper said. “We have only a couple of cans left.” She struggled to turn her expression stern again. “This doesn’t mean that I’m okay with your lying to me. You two are still in big trouble.”
Joel nodded solemnly. “Yes. Big trouble. Got it.”
“We didn’t want you to send them to the zoo!” Nina wailed.
“We think they should live with us,” Joel clarified.
“They cannot live with us,” Mrs. Popper said. “That’s not negotiable. Penguins do not belong in houses.”
“The Poppers did it!” Nina said.
“That was a long time ago,” Mrs. Popper said. “And what happened in the end? They realized that the penguins needed to be in nature, and Mr. Popper did the right thing. He brought them back to the wild.”
“Mom?” Joel said.
“Yes, Joel?”
“The Penguin Pavilion was already closed when we got here, so I didn’t see it in action or anything, but I don’t think it sounds like it was a good place for penguins. They left two eg
gs behind! I don’t think they deserve to have Ernest and Mae back.”
Their mother sighed. “I’m inclined to agree. Also, I don’t know where they are. The Penguin Pavilion left in the middle of the night, without telling anyone where they were going. They owed a lot of money and just disappeared.”
Through with cuddles for the moment, Ernest thrashed until Mrs. Popper released him onto the table. He waddled over to the edge and sniffed the air, beak pointing toward the kitchen. He had clearly decided it was time to eat again. As if to make a point, he deposited a bright white smear of penguin poo on the tabletop.
“I’ll clean that up!” Joel said hurriedly.
As a parent, Mrs. Popper found a smear of poo was no big deal. Without missing a beat, she pulled a handkerchief out of her back pocket and wiped it away.
“Does that mean we’re not bringing them to the zoo? But you also said they couldn’t stay here. I guess I’m confused,” Nina said.
“I’m a little confused, too,” Mrs. Popper confessed. She’d always been very honest with her children. “These penguins belong in the wild, but we can’t exactly bring them to the local beach, can we? They need a cold wilderness.”
Joel thought for a long moment. “Every kid around here knows that Mr. Popper brought his penguins up to the Arctic, to Popper Island,” he said. “What if we brought these chicks up to live with them?”
Nina hooted. “That would be amazing!”
Never one to be left out, Mae gave an excited oork from where she was nestled in Nina’s arms.
“It’s fall break soon,” Nina said, petting Mae’s fuzzy head. “We could go then!”
“Just how do you kids imagine we’ll get all the way to the Arctic?” Mrs. Popper asked.
“Stillwater might be the fancier city,” Joel said, “but there’s one advantage to living in Hillport, if you catch my drift.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Nina said.
“Port, Nina, port,” he said, pantomiming a ship rocking on the sea.
“Oh, yay!” Nina said. “I do like traveling by boat!”
THE POPPER FOUNDATION
IT WAS ONLY their second day of school, and yet the Popper children had already accomplished so much. They’d hatched two penguin chicks and come up with a plan for how to find them a home. Nina had even learned her spelling words—she wasn’t going to repeat that disaster again!
While the kids were in school, they left their chicks under the watchful eye of Mrs. Popper. As Ernest and Mae napped in the morning, Mrs. Popper went to the library to do some research of her own. She soon discovered that hatched birds don’t need any special heat sources in a temperate climate like Hillport’s—in fact their feathers insulated them so well that, until winter came, they’d need a way to cool down!
She went to the grocery store and bought some big bags of ice, which she dumped into a shallow tub in the corner of the kitchen. The penguins were smart creatures, she figured, and could decide how cold they wanted to be, using the ice as much as they saw fit. And that’s just what they did, hopping into the tub to play in the cubes for a while before joining Mrs. Popper in unpacking dishes (a task at which they were distinctly unhelpful), and then returning to the ice bath for some more cooling down.
As soon as the school day was over, the kids bounded home to see their chicks. Ernest and Mae greeted them with many cheeps and oorks. First the kids brought the chicks to the bathtub to swim laps. Then Joel lay on the floor, belly-down, and Ernest happily burrowed under his throat, his nesting position. Nina and Mae did the same. “Could you get our schoolbags for us, Mom?” Nina asked. “We’d better get used to doing our homework in this position.”
Mrs. Popper retrieved their bags from where they’d dropped them by the front door. “Once the penguins have had their snuggles and you’ve all had your afternoon snack, we’ll go down to the port to visit the Popper Foundation and see what they can do to help put our plan into action.”
“Really?” Joel said. “We’re going to ask them to get us to Popper Island? All the way in the Arctic?”
“That will be the best fall break ever,” Nina said.
“Can we bring Ernest and Mae to the port with us?” Joel asked once the snack was over.
“It does seem sad to leave them behind,” Mrs. Popper said. “Yes, we’ll bring them to the Popper Foundation, as long as you kids hold them tight.”
Ernest and Mae seemed to enjoy the car trip, turning their heads to and fro so they could peer out with one eye and then the other. Joel was learning that they didn’t face what they were looking at, usually, because of where their eyes were placed on their heads. Having an eye on either side allowed them to see all around them—which was probably very useful for avoiding seals in the water!
Once they’d parked at the harbor, Mrs. Popper led the kids to an address she’d written down on the back of an envelope. It was the office of the Popper Foundation. They knocked on a beautiful wooden door, carved with decorations of twelve regal-looking penguins.
The door buzzed open, and the Poppers filed into the foundation’s office.
“Sorry, busy today, come again another time,” the foundation representative said without looking up from his desk. He was a blustery bald man, with dried sea salt on his moustache.
Mae cheeped in outrage. The representative looked up. “Oh! Penguins!”
“We have two penguins here that need to get to the wild,” Nina said, sticking out her chest a trifle self-importantly. “And we’re Poppers. Distant relations.”
“Penguins!” the representative behind the desk repeated, his face warming at the sight of the two fuzzy little chicks.
“We’re hoping that we can bring these two to Popper Island, to live with the Popper Penguins!” Joel said.
“My understanding is that the only way to communicate with Popper Island is by maritime radio,” Mrs. Popper said. “Could you try to ring them up for us, to ask if they might be able to pick these chicks up the next time they come to town for supplies?”
“I’ll try,” the representative said, cracking his knuckles. “But it won’t go well.”
They all watched as he put on a headset and turned some dials. Even the chicks went silent, watching curiously from Nina’s and Joel’s arms. “Popper Island Station come in, Popper Island Station come in.” He removed the headset and turned back to them. “No answer. In fact, there’s been no answer for months.”
“Doesn’t that count as an emergency?” Mrs. Popper asked, surprised.
“It’s been decades since Mr. Popper brought the original twelve penguins there, of course. The foundation pays a local guy to be the island’s caretaker now. There wasn’t a distress signal. Perhaps the caretaker left the penguins to run themselves for a few weeks. That’s no crisis in my book.”
“It could be a crisis for the penguins!” Nina said hotly. “Mr. Popper would be outraged!”
“Won’t there be an investigation?” Joel tried.
“I’m afraid there’s nothing like that planned,” the representative said.
The kids looked up at their mother. She crossed her arms, kneading the elbows of her well-worn jacket. “Is there any other way to get to Popper Island? Someone needs to figure out if everything is okay. And get these two chicks up there.”
The representative pulled out an atlas, laid it flat on his desk, and beckoned them all to come around. Joel and Nina placed Mae and Ernest on top of the map. The chicks peered in wonder at the greens and blues beneath their feet.
The man with the mustache pointed at a small blip off the east coast of Canada. “That’s Popper Island, see?” As he gestured with his fingers, Mae took a curious nip at his wedding band. The burly representative ignored her as he traced a path along the blue ink of the water. “This is where the fishing routes normally go. As you can see, none of them travel anywhere near.”
The kids’ faces fell.
“We have to find a way to get there,” Mrs. Popper said resolu
tely.
“Well, yes, madam,” the representative said, smiling for the first time that afternoon. “This is the Popper Foundation, and our purpose is to care for the Popper Penguins. We care a great deal.” He scrawled a name and phone number down on a piece of paper. “Contact Yuka. He grew up near Popper Island and takes trips back up there sometimes to visit his family. He has a sturdy little boat and is an excellent captain. He’ll get your penguins there safely. Of course, the Popper Foundation will fund the expedition, since you’ll also be doing us the favor of reporting back on how the Popper birds are doing.”
“Oork!” said Mae triumphantly, before taking another friendly nip at the representative’s knuckle.
LEAVING HILLPORT
THE SMALL BOAT dipped and rocked where it was tied to the Hillport dock. “Are you sure this is seaworthy? I mean, Arctic seaworthy?” Joel whispered to his mother.
“This looks amazing!” Nina said, bounding aboard. She held Mae out in her palms, turning in a circle. The chick peered up and down. “Oork, oork!” In just the last few weeks, her voice had changed some. Her oorks were getting closer to adult penguin orks.
“It’s going to be totally safe,” Mrs. Popper said as she stepped onto the deck. “Come on, kids, I want to introduce you to Yuka.”
Joel and Nina brought their two chicks to Yuka. He was a young man with an open, friendly face.
“Hi there!” Yuka said. When he reached out his hand for a shake, Joel didn’t know what to do at first and gave him his left hand, until he realized he should switch them, awkwardly juggling Ernest in the process. Nina, of course, figured out handshakes right away.
“Yuka is Inuit,” Mrs. Popper explained. “That means his ancestors lived in the Arctic long before Europeans got there.”
Yuka nodded. “It’s been a few years since I lived up there, though. I came down to Stillwater College to get my doctorate in comparative zoology. I study aquatic bird migrations, actually! That’s why the Popper Foundation knew about me.”
The Popper Penguin Rescue Page 3