The light blinded Travis – the noise all but deafened him.
The Screech Owls had just come out of the New England Aquarium into the brilliant sunlight of a July noon hour. The sun stabbing into Travis’s eyes caused him to blink until he could regain focus. The noise, however, remained the same: thunder-like and echoing. Made by people shouting angrily.
There was a rally going on. The broad walkway to the aquarium was filled with two hundred or more protesters holding up placards and shaking them while several television crews filmed.
“Free the penguins!” they shouted.
“Close down the NEA prison!”
“Put the scientists on display, not the sharks!”
“Drain the tanks!”
“Release the penguins!”
A platform and microphone had been set up to one side. Beside the platform, the woman in the penguin costume was conferring with a couple of other protesters.
“What’s this all about?” Sarah asked.
“Animal rights protest, I suppose,” said Data. “They think zoos should be shut down and the animals released back to nature. I guess it’s the same with aquariums.”
Men and women wearing buttons saying “Free the Penguins” were walking about the boardwalk, handing out leaflets. Nish waved them away when two of them approached the Owls, but Sam stepped forward and took one. A woman held out a leaflet in Travis’s direction; being too polite to refuse it, Travis took it, folded it carefully, and stuffed it in his back pocket.
The woman dressed in the penguin suit was now at the microphone. Feedback screeched loudly over the speakers, and a man wearing earphones at a nearby control panel quickly turned some dials. Instantly, the area filled with the booming, echoing voice of the woman in the penguin suit.
“We are here today in support of those in captivity!” she shouted. “We are the voice of the prisoners of the New England Aquarium. We are here to see justice served, to see those who belong to the sea returned to the sea.”
The woman in the penguin suit went on about the rights of animals to live their lives as nature intended. She spoke about how penguins that were hatched in the aquarium were fooled into believing human beings were their parents. “How ridiculous is that?” she shouted. “How wrong is that?”
The Owls stood there, watching and listening, Mr. D checking his watch every minute or so. It was fascinating. The Owls had never heard anything like it.
After the penguin woman, a man talked about how chickens were raised in mass poultry farms where their captors cut off their beaks so they couldn’t peck each other to death. He talked about how geese were force-fed so that their livers swelled up, and how the bloated livers were used to create a gourmet dish called pâté. Another man talked about how cows and pigs never saw the light of day, never felt sunshine on their bodies or grass under their feet. They were kept in “animal prison cells” where food was pumped in one end and waste material pumped out the other. “Meat factories,” he called them.
“Sick,” said Fahd.
“What’s that got to do with the aquarium?” Sarah asked. “The animals we saw inside were wonderfully well cared for and weren’t going to be eaten by anyone – or anything, for that matter.”
“Still,” added Sam, “it’s wrong, no matter how you look at it. What right do we have to decide the fate of others? Just because we’re humans doesn’t mean we get to do whatever we want to other animals.”
“I’d like to eat another animal right about now,” said Nish. “Maybe some KFC without the beaks!”
Sam turned furiously on Nish, her eyes blazing.
“How would you like to be raised in a cage?” she shouted.
“I have been,” Nish shot back. “It’s called school – and I’m about to break free!”
This time it was Sam who blew a raspberry at Nish – but at the same time she was clearly starting to cry.
“Okay, okay, okay,” Mr. D said, bringing an end to the exchange between Nish and Sam. “We’ve got a lunch to make and a game to play.”
“What’s for lunch?” Nish asked. “I’m in the mood for seafood.”
Travis reached out and pinched the inside of Nish’s arm. A signal for him to cool it. He was going too far.
But it was too late. Sam was running ahead of the rest of the Owls, and Travis could tell she was truly upset.