You probably wonder how I get to type this stuff, not having a computer. Well, I use one of the workstations in the research centre. Most of the time the researchers are out and about and, generally, they leave the door open. Burglary is not something we have over much of a problem with here, being 60km from the sea and the only access for your lot is by helicoptor. And of course the researchers trust US! We're only penguins! Sometimes they do lock the door if a gale threatens and they don't want to come back to a station full of snow but it's one of those keypad things. You punch a few numbers in and the door opens.
Now you'd think that would be tricky, wouldn't you? Not at all for a penguin who's read Feynman. They did it in the world's most 'secret' project in 1944/5 and they're still doing it! They write the thing down and leave it all over the place in case THEY forget it. Same with their computer passwords, especially the newbies! Post-it notes on the side of the monitor, password written on the blotter or on a piece of paper inside the drawer. And these people claim to be intelligent!
It's just as well really because it meant I got to show Sparky the kiwi film last night after they'd all gone to bed. I made him watch it ten times, one after the other. I kept pointing out to him that evolution had not equipped the kiwi with useful wings. Trying to fly could only end in tragedy. In the same way, evolution had not equipped Sparky to do two complete corkscrews in air. I thought at the time he had taken my point but later, and all through the night, all you could hear was the sound of Sparky crash landing in the dark behind the bluff.
Spent the morning with Havelock, timing Cozy down the chute. Because I had the egg on my feet, I waited level with the end of the chute, holding the stop watch. Cozy would call as he dived into the chute, Havelock would start the timer (takes two of you when you have no opposable thumbs) and stop it when Cozy left the end. We did ten runs without lube and then smeared Cozy's belly with lube and did another ten runs. Tomorrow I have to work out from the speed differences how long Cozy should delay before entering the chute after the two penguins in front of him have started off to get the effect he wants. Should be fairly easy, I think.
However I was a little puzzled by Cozy's cryptic comment as he left to waddle his way back to the rookery. "I don't suppose you can lay your wings on a flare or two, can you?"
The rest of the afternoon was spent watching from the edge of the rookery as some of the other penguins practiced their moves and trying to get the lube off the underside of our wings where we'd smeared Cozy with it. There is still a bit of work to be done for some of them but they are getting there. However my heart sank when about an hour before sunset, Sparky waddled to the top of the chute. Havelock just closed his eyes and laid his beak on his breast. I think Sparky's failed double corkscrews just remind him of what HE can never recapture.
As Sparky left the end of the chute and slammed his wing down hard right, it was as much as I could do to keep my eyes open. It is never easy to watch a friend so constantly fail - the lump in your throat refuses to move for soooo long. Only he didn't! Two complete corkscrews and a perfect belly landing!
He calmly got up and waddled back to the top of the chute again. You could have heard a snowflake settle on my head. He executed the same manoeuvre again, perfectly. As he picked himself up, he looked in my direction. Waddling towards me, he started to scratch his arse. When he was a wing length away from me, he pushed his wing against my nostril and said very calmly, "Smell that and weep! Clever clogs!" As he turned to leave, he mumbled to himself, "Kayaks, eskimo rolls, you just have to use both wings, one up, one down."
I just bet you're p**sing yourself with laughter, aren't you? How wrong could I be? Sparky showed him! Well, you're wrong! I was right! Just a little bit less right than I usually am!
Anyways, Sparky came to apologise about an hour later. He said he was just so pleased with himself he couldn't help crowing but I think he was more apologising for the awful smell that was still rising in pungent waves from his wing tip. After I'd moved a little upwind of him, I asked him how he hit on the solution. "It was strange," he said. "I was waddling back up to the top last night after my zillionth attempt, waving my wing up and down, trying to get that little bit 'extra', when suddenly, I remembered something from a survival book I'd read ages ago. It had these little pictures of someone righting a capsized canoe. The trick was to push your paddle back the way you had come to keep you rolling in the same direction and so do a complete circle. I don't know why I remembered that particular book or why I thought it would work but it just seemed a solution to roughly the same kind of problem. I tried it. It worked."
I just hope he doesn't start thinking triples!
It just goes to show what's bubbling around just below the surface of what eventually becomes conscious thought.
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