The Return To Narnia (Short Story Concept) by Nathaniel A Miller A concept story that sequeled loosely the last book of the Narnia Ch... [8,436 words]
The Hawk by Cari Graham We find our strength and healing powers in the strangest of places. [489 words]
She (The Short Story) by Jamie Goetz She is the short story of a girl who sees the apparition of a familiar female figure. She... [2,961 words]
The Clergyman And The Brothel by James Buchannon This is a scene from a book I'm thinking about writing. It's set in the future an... [2,684 words]
Warm Goo by Gregory Allen Oddly enough, this story has generated interest with a publisher (subject to some rewrite) [3,277 words]
The Convict by Gregory Allen In the mind of a serial killer. [723 words]
The Bookcase In The Basement by Francois Fouche A mystery tale developed around the phenomenon of books changing locations in a ca... [5,118 words]
The Sunrise For Lady May by Gregory De Feo - [1 words]
The Virgin Of Chelsea by Francois Fouche The Virgin of Chelsea is the story of Eoin Farrelly, a London oil painter obsessed with t... [2,527 words]
The Slow Man by Gregory Allen Story of unstable retarded man. [1,267 words]
Wicked They Come by Susan Brassfield Cogan What is making that darned noise? [2,930 words]
Why Did You Not Stop Me? by Animesh Kar He thought he knoew about all of them! but he was wrong till that morning ... which wa... [3,028 words]
What Is Love Anyway! by Shmuel Yacobi Gist of the story: Feggy and Phil became good friends through Internet chat. Feggy wanted... [1,975 words]
The Legend Of Yin by Michelle Jones A story of an assassin in ancient China, out for revenge on his father's murderer. [2,940 words]
The Lake (The V. D. P. Levon Version) by V D P Levon Except for exact words, the inclusion of a cell phone and an idea, and th... [757 words]
The First Night by Alvin Gladstone The couple have just got married and the night has began, as they get ready to sleep - the adve... [4,709 words]
The First Alex by Gregory Allen Does anybody review any stories? [3,985 words]
The Color Of Life by Shmuel Yacobi Gist of the story: An actress was kidnapped. She managed to escape into the forest area. She ... [2,073 words]
The Chinese Run Away Bride by Shmuel Yacobi Gist of the story: The wedding celebration started in a village in China. The commun... [1,351 words]
The Absent by Martin De Leon Taking place in a hallway, a young mexican math teacher and his wife--she a maker a videos that she ... [4,500 words]
Star Shining Masterpiece. by Bradley Grimes A man exposes his masterpiece, to an overly critical girlfriend. [3,953 words]
Shooting Birds by M B Barlow A SF story set in the world of Deus. [6,092 words]
Out Of Sync by Gregory Allen Maybe it was just a dream. [722 words]
Nothing But The Truth by Shmuel Yacobi Gist of the story: Willy was on his way to Las Vegas and met with an accident. Willy slo... [2,071 words]
Middle Aged Misadventure by Ryan Michaels A humorous and true story about a 50 something year old and his quest for a kinship wi... [6,156 words]
Man In The Bank by Alvin Gladstone An anxious man in a bank, something is worrying him. [824 words]
Lost In New York by Shmuel Yacobi Gist of the story: The beach cop finds a lost girl. She is mute. Beach cop took her to Dr. Sar... [1,574 words]
Letter To Dad by Cari Graham This is moving letter written to a father that has passed in hopes of bringing closure to the gri... [403 words]
If All Things Are Possible,� Why Can't I Balance My Checkbook? by James Snyder For me, the most terrible time of each month is ... [904 words]
How It Must Feel To Die Alone by Aryka - [484 words]
Girl Downstairs by Alice W-M A girl meets another girl who steals the love of her life. [707 words]
Fenrir Part 1 by George L Shultz Big man meets small girl and kills many bad-guys. [3,310 words]
Engagement Of Love by Bancy Mwihaki A short story about relationships - family, love, friendship - all involving one young woman... [2,755 words]
Enemy Inside by Shmuel Yacobi Gist of the story: The US National Security Adviser Raymond�s Chinese wife Joe had secretly hired ... [3,877 words]
Do You Think I Was Wrong? by Animesh Kar When the thin line between reality and dreams get crossed!!!! [2,991 words]
Dead Or Alive by Shmuel Yacobi Gist of the story: Draco is a hunter and a very big man. He went out into the forest for hunting.... [1,809 words]
Alternative Justice by Shmuel Yacobi Gist of the story: Two young fellows raped a girl and accidentally killed her. The police f... [1,821 words]
After Death by Animesh Kar How he wished to come with him. But they said destiny is much more powerful than one can imagine! [2,052 words]
A Special Day by Cari Graham Remember how it used to feel when you waited for that special someone to arrive. [376 words]
A Cup Of Joe Says A Lot About Us by James Snyder This week I came face-to-face with a genuine dilemma. I had several meetings a... [902 words]
This Story Will Never End by Elide Bors This is a story of love... It proves that even when the body is old, the spirit can l... [7,467 words]
The Weight Of The Past by Diana Blizzard A young biracial girl explores her past in an attempt to connect with her African Americ... [2,945 words]
The Nephilim by Clint Stutts A man reflects on the demise of the small town he lived in. Where did the giants come from? Can ... [2,369 words]
The Movie Store by Daniel Hurley When I wrote this story I wanted to make it as real as possible. I wanted to capture the every... [3,003 words]
The Lopsided Penguin
The Escape by Nur Syafiqah A Jaaffar A short tale of a prisoner's escape from jail. [964 words]
The Dream by Daniel Brown A short story with a surprise ending. [1,163 words]
Soap Machine by Alexander Petrov - [2,187 words]
Shadow's Adventure 2 by Maritza Vargas This is just basicly part 2 of the story!! Shadow is having no luck in finding Menchi. Oh ... [668 words]
Pay Dirt by Armand Waksberg To be different is not necessarily bad! [1,811 words]
One Friday Night by Kenneth MacLellan - [3,112 words]
Neuro by Martin De Leon A piece of microfiction that was a top ten finalist in the Austin Chronicle's 2004 Short Story Contest. I... [1 words]
Jai by Casey Lauber Jai is an average guy or so he thinks... [1,549 words]
I-10 Crash by Brittany Tellez On August 13,2004 my brother, me and my mom were driving home and their was a dust storm, and we wer... [800 words]
Hunger Pains by Riot "She was fat..." [495 words]
Her Last Breath by Ryne Hughes This is a story of me witnessing my own mother as she takes her last breath. Title pretty much ... [895 words]
Gardens by Alexander Petrov - [1,296 words]
Final Climb by Constant Ngozi It's all about a climb that was supposed to be the final. [1,894 words]
Falling Free by Sarah-Ashleigh Jones-West When a man numb with life, hopelessly in unrequited love discovers a woman also caught in the mund... [2,157 words]
Estrella's Walk by Skeeze Whitlow Sensual description of Central American Witch's walk to the sea. [629 words]
Drugged On Vengeance by Jack M Brown A son, father and uncle, poisoned by sweet stories of victory, courage and honour, decide ... [1,408 words]
Doctor Trek - Meeting The Grade by Ian Kidd Captain Who and his companions try to stop a band of crazed, time-travelling "D... [8,936 words]
Cheeku And His Jungle Friends. by Srija Bhattacharjee The story is about a intelligent rabbit who trys to solves problems and troubles... [142 words]
Capp Gun by Bryan King A story about a capp gun. [1,089 words]
Capp Gun (Extended And Edited) by Bryan King A story about a capp gun. [1,489 words]
Brothers Of War by Brett M Holden A Union Sergeant marches to war with a regiment of veterans and new recruits. He has no left a... [4,005 words]
A Story Of Warriors Rev1 by Albert Davis This is a revised edition of a short story I submitted several years ago. [3,373 words]
6 Billion Chances To Kill by Bryan King An inspector is comming to the grill. I wonder what he might find. [511 words]
6 And 1 Half Minutes by Bryan King Sheriff Lanson is a crazy man. [1,034 words]
Go to page: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 [22] 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50
| |
TITLE (EDIT)
The Lopsided Penguin |
DESCRIPTION
A research scientist in Antartica takes a penguin on board.
[1,491 words] |
TITLE KEYWORD
Animal |
AUTHOR
Lori Lorien |
ABOUT
THE AUTHOR
-
[July 2005] |
AUTHOR'S E-MAIL ADDRESS
[email protected] |
The Lopsided Penguin
Lori Lorien
Morgan's the name. Sam Morgan. CSIRO research scientist stationed at Mawson in Antarctica. I'm going to tell you a story. A story that began at sea on the vessel Prinsesse Astrid, a Norwegian ship traversing the ice and sleet-blown seas of the Southern Ocean bound for Dronning Maudland, on Norwegian Antarctica.
It was during the long summer where night is like day and out of the icy seas springs forth a multitude of wildlife - whales, seals, birdlife and penguins.
We had crossed Longitude 15� latitude 60� and the seas were getting heavier with biting winds. I braced myself against a pole and lit my pipe. I stood gazing out to sea, wondering what the next six months were going to hold.
My job was as observer of wildlife patterns. It was of importance to note down the exact position of sightings of particular species, for comparison with previous years. So I spent most of my time on deck. I had gotten used to the heaving seas and no longer felt seasick.
I spotted a school of southern bottlenose whales on route to more temperate waters early on the 15th of December. They bounded through the waters with joy, their shimmering bodies heaving in unison, their tails splashing and beating the sea. I noted their position on my chart for later transference to computer.
As I turned again I caught sight of a large area of grey marking on the waters out of which loomed a shapeless mass of ice. Daubs of grey marked the iceberg at water level. I alerted others on deck. We had an oil slick to contend with. Already I could make out the forms of wild birds struggling in the stuff on the surface of the water. "How could this happen so far south?" asked the lieutenant on watch.
It was not clear where and how the slick had originated, but I convinced the Captain to allow a clean-up operation which involved bathing the affected birds in a weak solution of detergent and rinsing the muck off their feathers.
We took several animals on board which would not have survived on their own but which we had a faint chance of saving. Among these was a Penguin, little more than a youngster, which I christened Wendy. She had more than oil to contend with. She had a piece of metal wire embedded in her foot, the pain from which accentuated the normal waddle of penguins. She reminded me of Charlie Chaplain.
But of course we had to deal with the injury.
"Oil slicks and wire at 60� latitudes" I muttered to myself as I set about trying to remove the wire from Wendy's foot with a pair of surgical tweezers while Lars (my assistant) held her down. She cried as I pulled the wire free and dressed the wound.
After the scrubbing with detergent and the foot operation she huddled in a miserable mass in an oilskin and I thought she was going to die. I took her into my cabin when we had done all we could for the others. For two days she refused food and got weaker. I sat stroking her soft feathers saying goodbye to her as I didn't think she would last the night. To my amazement she started jabbing at my sheets in the middle of the night, honking at me.
"Well, well, what have we here?" I said. Wendy tugged at the sheet. She was determined to get me up. When I stood up she became frightened. She had obviously not been prepared to face a six foot human in a confined space. But she was hungry and persisted, coming over closer to me. When I reached down to pick her up she huddled against my wellington boots.
I realised she was frightened but somehow she must have known I would not hurt her. I left her there in my cabin as I went down to the galley to rustle her up some breakfast. When I came back ten minutes later I could hear a thumping and a squealing noise coming from the cabin. Lars, who was in the next cabin, was up, scratching his head and yawning, as he poked his head around the door and complained "For Pete's sake, Sam, it's bloody 4 a.m."
I muttered something like an apology, and opened the door to confront the rather amazing scene of half a Penguin sticking out of a wellington boot, dragging itself around with an accompaniment of much honking and sqwauking.
"Hey, hey, old girl, I said, putting the fish I'd brought into the basin. "Come on, let me help you." I pulled her head out of the boot. I was still holding her while I tried to calm her down but she was not ready for such close contact. She bit me.
"Yow!" I yelled. "Is that any way to show gratitude?" She huddled against the boot that was still standing by the bed. Suddenly I got an idea. I put my feet into the boots and stood before her. She backed into the corner. I decided to ignore her while I cut up her fish. I put pieces onto an enamel plate and put them down on the floor. She must truly have been starving because she came over to the plate immediately, tasted and then gobbled the food as I kept putting more on her plate.
When she had finished I decided to watch her, so I sat back down on the bunk. She started proceedings very well I must say. She piddled on the floor. Finally she settled back into the oilskins and went to sleep, as I did, till daylight and the summons to breakfast.
The cook asked if anyone noticed what had happened to the fine fillet of fish he had put out to thaw for breakfast. I had to offer my apologies.
"Well," said the cook, "at least tell me you enjoyed it. It was the finest piece of ocean trout I caught this summer. How did you cook it?"
"I didn't cook it."
"You ate it RAW? And you an Aussie. I don't believe it."
"I didn't eat it" I said lamely.
All of the men at the table began to take an interest.
"Tell us, Sam, what did you do with cookie's fish?" came the cry.
"If you ask me, I'd say he gave it to the bloody penguin," laughed Lars. The whole table broke into laughter. Even cook was laughing.
"Guilty as charged", I said. "Sorry cook".
"If you're going to raise that penguin yourself let me choose the fish for it in the future." said the cook.
From that time twice a day cook appeared at my door with a bucket of fish. As I had to continue my own work above deck, I would take the penguin with me. She had become attached to my boots (and me I suppose). If I stood for long in one place I would often feel her climb onto my boots, where she would sit happily for an hour or so. When I walked down the deck the other men would call out "Look behind. Here comes Charlie Chaplain!" I would turn to see Wendy running or waddling in her lopsided way down the deck, her feet flapping on the wooden boards.
A few more days passed before we reached Dronning Maudland where I had to change vessels to get to Mawson.
The small Australian vessel Icebreaker II presented no problems for man and companion penguin. It was at the station of Mawson itself that I encountered the first real resistance. The officer in charge refused to allow me to keep the penguin indoors, while I completed the recording of my findings from the summer voyages onto computer.
To help Wendy cope I would leave my wellington boots outside the cabin door at night. I would often find her snuggled up near them in the mornings.
There were hundreds, perhaps even one thousand penguins clustered around the base. More came. Wendy would disappear into the crowd of penguins and become invisible, until I appeared. She would waddle out in her lopsided way to greet me, pecking at my boots and rubbing herself against my hand. It was getting toward the breeding season and Wendy was adult when I left Mawson in Springtime.
I went out among all the penguins and could not find her. I was sad when I was just about to leave at the thought of never seeing her again. But something happened. I can't explain it, except that Lars may have had a hand in it.
As I went to collect my things from my room I opened the door and in the middle of the floor stood a beautiful mother penguin, with a perfect little baby penguin on her feet. The mother was Wendy.
She had moved happily it seems from domestic to wilderness environments. I walked down the hall with Wendy and baby following. I saw her back into the crowd of penguins, and headed away, knowing that Wendy and I were both the richer for having met.
|
READER'S REVIEWS (5)
DISCLAIMER: STORYMANIA DOES NOT PROVIDE AND IS NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR REVIEWS. ALL REVIEWS ARE PROVIDED BY NON-ASSOCIATED VISITORS, REGARDLESS OF THE WAY THEY CALL THEMSELVES.
"Confederal Democratic Republic of Aurora Australis is my originating country where we have following rescue work with persons too ill to travel made them feel at home by referring to small adjacent communities by names also from their own countries; for that reason we have soldiers referring to their location within five miles from here as LittleIraq and others have referred to it as Afghanistan with then a reference to their own home or family cluster location; we have many australian canadian, english and american locations where planecrash or poisoning victims and wounded are gradually oruienting themselves...bye for now, by the way when I gave the name Lori Lorien it was just to show the diminutive that everyone always uses for me; my name is pronounce :"low rain" but is spelled lorien and my full registered birthname was to be transferred from family and village records to public record certification when I turned twenty-one but not at home in my birthplace at the time includIn our country name registration is a step by step process because we get to choose one of our names ourselves, my choice was to add Kelly to my existing family and village registration of Miss Lorien Fitzgerald and add ingmy personal orientation name Kelly would have been a special event as it is for everyone but my family are not alive now and my work was in the southern hemisphere. I had been born at Velizy-Villacoublay (Vichy France) and was brought to Australia by my mother who was bringing medical supplies inadvertently left behind by those wounded officers of the australian light horse and adjacent support forces who were returning to Australia injured and still in agony following severe wounding and chromium dioxide poisoning and mustard gas poisoning in north africa and partial recovery under the supervision of the Vatican's Cardinal O'Flaherty who married my mother Kristen Lawrence to my poor father who had been forced by a lesbian child thief to list her as his wife not as his stepmother so that as many others also with the same problem had Cardinal O'Flaherty fighting in Rome, Paris, Ireland and Sydney through every bureaucratic and legalese redtape conspiracy already in place from Pankhurst's bloomer lesbians in England to Chicago Womens Electoral Lobby in the U.S.A. to the witchcraft and prostitbution governed counter-intelligence bookburning illiterate hidden hospital and baby-centre murdering torturers of the crpse-hill dotted desolate wastelands of ruined countries like Spain and wind-swept former forest lands like Ireland, Spain's horrors depicted in Ernest HGemingway's 'For Whom the Bell Tolls' and the English/Irish horrors of lesbianist militia desecration shown in Charles Dickens' 'Our Mutual Friend' reminding us that "Hell knows no fury like a woman scorned..." which fury of maiming terrible torture the lesbians behind closed pristine white signed doors using insane cannibalistic murderers to give the maximum suffering to each ordinary man,woman or child who might even suggest that a lesbian in choosing apes as their sexual partners was not entitled to evaluate out of existence to offer and not supply and deny every person every personal choice and every personal friend and deny them every correct interpretation of their value and the vale of their work as they enslaved, tortured and defamed each citizen in a frenzied program of baby skinning, trampling, maiming and disfiguring and giving in covert torture chambers the exact replication of the death of jesus christ smashing huge infected nails through our wrists, stabbing, injecting diseases, howling with laughter at us as they beheaded our friendsa and threw the dismembered precious parts of the bodies of our murdered families into our presence telling us that everyone hated, rejected usnd laughed at our agony. That is what most of the personal friends I have ever known have had happen to them and yet we fight against the filthy falsehoods of the lesbianist militia who offer for sale only what they do not own, defame women in court and on the media before they have ever seen them having their name on a list, calling them "damaged goods" and then handing out business cards wquith each listed woman's name on it, inviting men ton pay her money to attack the listed women, again evry time calliung them "damaged goods' and using the expression always"She is the kind of prostitute who is not prepared to be a prostitute" when no woman who is a normal woman ever will have heard that prostitution exists or will think it is a word from ancient times. The lesbians are so filthy when they always the say"You can attack the stupid bitch..she's 'damaged goods' she's been attacked...that's what shge's for, and what she will be emerging from is a first call at a court house where she will have loudly gained entry supposedly howling with rage that a woman has been attacked, having gained only a half of an hour before a list of the names of women in that area that she has never met, often only hours after arriving in a territory she has never been to before, with lines drawn between names of men and the women who generally will never have met but be linked in the vile prattled text they master in their filthy onslought against each and every society they intend to contaminate.. prostitute as a word means lesbianist militiam, the lesbians put all the advertisements in place, and their sexual pereference is for anaesthetised apes..they are respoinsible for the program of international assassinations, inflamed political diatribes and conscriptees even where conscription is described on radio or television as involving men going off to far battlefields has resulted in horror stories whipping up terror among young men who do not want to kill or be killed with the cunning lesbians who suddenly appear as "old aunties, back after forty years away" with stolen credentials, taking over by murder the houses of remote or isolated people these lesbians giving to conscriptees"the offer they can not refuse" with a lied-to horrible life of taking their military-issue weapoins behind the wall to guard the secrecy of lesbians holding, anaesthetising and raping male apes in captivity, and even more horribly, men attacked and held comatose by these horrible torturing ghouls, these filthy guilty, false witches who sugar each other's reputations with false awards and demand the controls over banks, financing, economics, and listings, and postal delivery and once esconced in any society, occupy a stranglehold on resources, leeching out the lifeblood of every community left sacked, destroyed, with the people's bodies thrown into piuts and piled up in mountains of corpsaes, with nothing left alive that is not starving and in agony. Excuse typos, this is grim and a bit long, but it needed to be acknowledged as so many have bravely from north america from south america and from japan and fron france since 2000A.D. been prepoared to reveal how terrible it has been for them; the danger lesbians have posed has been a worldwide phenomenon, and we have suffered it too. Hold onto your life, live not love, be a nation in two shoes, be the head of every government department of the nation of yourself..it's called PERSONAL GOVERNAUNCE...then by 2017 we may have what so may of us will move back to, looking after each possible area where any predator might for an instant offer to "help" us in order to weaken us, and turning to what we can do instead of what others say we should do, doing what works for us, not saying or speaking, not needing others to debate or block our every activation of our own discretionary processes - no counter-gender psychotic freed illegally to be run in "clock-work orange" mode their filthy massmurdering cannibalistic madhouse terrorists by envying "hornet in the mouth, viper-tongued lesbians" can do other than repeat-mode,repeat-mode, repeat-mode in predictable tracked mastered patterns shadowed and terminated, swallowed up in killing each other, falling into their own filthy traps as they have sold their dirty easy-kill-to-riches follow their dirty controllers with their illegal radio-governed horror-show-obsessed theives " -- Kelly Lorien, Hall South, NSW /Neueholland, CDRAA.
"OoO! Nice site! I juuust LOVE it! Found it rather interesting and useful, you know:) http://www.phentermine.grandsearch.net" -- Phentermine, ..., ..., ....
"Ehmm..m. Sehr gut Seite! Ich sage innig..!:) bmw" -- BMW, ..., ..., ....
" empire poker bonus empire poker bonus empire poker com empire poker com empire poker empire poker free empire poker free empire poker empire poker bonus code empire poker bonus code " -- empire poker, empire poker, empire poker, empire poker.
"ivkwd arpwq lyxeg cmvhuire wrmdh imwtzx eqvcsu" -- mxyqstnv nqfakjhxe, xyothn, CA, USA.
TO DELETE UNWANTED REVIEWS CLICK HERE! (SELECT "MANAGE TITLE REVIEWS" ACTION) |
|
Submit Your Review for The Lopsided Penguin
Required fields are marked with (*).
Your e-mail address will not be displayed.
|
|
Submit Your Rating for The Lopsided Penguin
|
COPYRIGHT NOTICE
© 2005 Lori Lorien |
STORYMANIA PUBLICATION DATE
July 2005 |
NUMBER OF TIMES TITLE VIEWED
3695
|
|
