Veronica
LOCKET ISLAND
“He can stay in my room,” I tell Terry decisively as we head back inside. “We’ll make up a little nest for him.”
“You go ahead and settle him in, Veronica. I’ll see what fish I can find in the storeroom. We’ll need to get some food down him as quickly as possible.”
The baby penguin nestles into me. His feet hang limply; his head flops against my chest. I carry him back through the lounge, whispering sweet nothings and ignoring the disgruntled faces of Mike and Dietrich as I pass. Just before I close my bedroom door behind me, I catch Dietrich saying to Mike: “Leave her be. The poor bird will probably die in any case.”
I cuddle “the poor bird” close to me.
“You are not going to die,” I assure him. He doesn’t respond.
Where can I put him? I lower him gently onto my bed while I think. He stays put in a semi-recumbent position, his eyes half-closed. My empty suitcases are stacked against one wall of the room. I stoop down, causing my back to creak a little in protest, lift the smallest of the cases and place it, open, on the bed, near the foot end. I pad it out using my turquoise woolen cardigan with gold buttons. I place the fluffy orphan inside. He collapses at once onto his belly. A trace of pinkish fluid trickles out from his rear end.
“Don’t worry about the cardigan,” I tell him. “I have it in two other colors.”
He doesn’t look remotely guilty. If I could read penguin expressions (and I believe I can), I would say he was manifesting sheer bewilderment. He’s as floppy as a rag doll. It is indeed hard to believe he isn’t some sort of soft toy. I sit next to him on the bed, stroking his soft down, trying to soothe him. Later I will go out and gather some stones, shells and lichen to make him feel more at home.
Terry comes into my bedroom carrying a bowl of pungent-smelling pinkish mush.
“Oh, I see you’ve already sacrificed a cardigan,” she notes. “We could’ve given him an old blanket.”
“It doesn’t matter in the least. What sustenance have you brought for him?”
“It’s tinned tuna. I’ve warmed it up and mashed it with water . . . I hope he’ll like it. It’ll do him good, anyway, if we can somehow get it down him.”
She perches on the bed next to the suitcase so that we have him between us.
She takes a small syringe from her pocket. “From the lab. Let’s give this a go, then.” She fills the syringe and waves it about in front of his beak. He shows little interest. He is still in a state of collapse.
Does he, in fact, want to live, I ask myself? I automatically assumed that he did, which was very wrong of me.
“As I feared,” Terry comments. “We’re going to have to force the issue.”
I scrutinize the plate of revolting mush. “I hope we’re not going to have to regurgitate it for him.” At this point I begin to question where are the limits of my affection for this needy creature.
“Come on, Patrick!” Terry coaxes.
The chick shows no interest in the food, however, and continues to look fragile.
“Come on, Patrick! Patrick, come on!” I urge.
Terry gently pries open his beak with her finger and thumb. Before he has time to protest, she has released several drops of the mixture down his gullet. She closes his beak again and holds it closed. Little Patrick wriggles and flails about, then gulps. We watch the lump in his neck travel down, the bolus of food safely on its way to his tummy. For a moment he looks affronted that we have taken such a liberty. But suddenly he seems to put two and two together: he is hungry and this is edible, therefore the whole undignified affair must classify as a good thing. He opens his beak wide in a clear indication that more is required.
Terry turns toward me with a triumphant grin. “Well, that’s the first hurdle sorted!”
I clap my hands together in glee. “Tremendous! Oh, Terry! Well done!”
“It was nothing,” she says, modestly, as she rests the bowl on the bed. She hands me the syringe. “So, he’s your chick. You do it.”
I need no further encouragement. I extract a generous amount of the fishy mush and release it into Patrick’s open beak. He swallows it more eagerly this time. He opens his beak again.
We take it in turns to feed him.
“Thank you, Terry.”
“Thank you, Veronica. I’m glad you insisted. He’s well worth the trouble. Aren’t you, little Patrick?” she says to our new charge.
Already he seems stronger. I’m sure I can see a spark of determination has kindled in his bright eyes, a dogged willpower. He does want to live. He’s going to give it his best effort. He’s keen to defy the odds.
I’m not the only stubborn one around here.
I still go out to the penguin colony to be among the other penguins every day, but only for a short time. Patrick the Penguin has become my chief concern. I now know the location of all the different sorts of fish at the field base. In addition to tuna, there is frozen cod, herring and fish fingers. Once they are defrosted, I remove the skin, bones or batter as required, warm them in the oven, mash them carefully with water and serve them straight into Patrick’s beak with the syringe. It is a rare and satisfying feeling to be of use to a fellow creature.
Terry is going to try and source some krill for him as well, as this (in regurgitated form) is what he’d be eating in the wild. There are fisheries on some of the islands. “I wouldn’t normally have dealings with them,” she has informed me. “I feel a bit ambivalent toward them because overfishing is one of the big threats to the penguins’ future. Still, if we can help our Patrick . . .”
Patrick’s strength is building day by day. He spends much time snuggled up in the turquoise cardigan in the suitcase, which is now on the floor. He likes to play with the cardigan’s gold buttons. I think he is amused by their roundness and shininess, as any child would be.
He is now able to waddle about on my bedroom floor and make short forays into the lounge. He is, of course, incapable of opening a door himself, and doesn’t grasp the concept of knocking. If he wants to go through he will wait, pressed up against the door. This alarms me because he is in danger of being squashed should somebody suddenly open the door from the other side. It nearly happened once with Dietrich. I suggested that to avoid this we should always call out, “Penguin clear?” before opening. However, people cannot be trusted to remember.
Terry says it’s vitally important he doesn’t develop agoraphobia and we must let him wander about the field center. For this reason I’ve accepted the fact that most of the doors inside the building will have to remain open. Initially, I found this trying and stressful, but I’m becoming accustomed to it. Penguin Patrick takes full advantage of his freedom and wanders at will.
Unfortunately, Patrick, like his namesake, has no comprehension of basic hygiene. Little accidents occur all the time and require the application of strong detergent and a mop. If Eileen were present, this duty would be allocated to her, but as the three scientists are out for most of the day, the responsibility is mine. I don’t relish heaving a bucket of water around, but needs must. Astonishingly, I find that I rise to the challenge without the slightest trace of resentment.
Even more astonishing is the fact that my baby penguin seems to have taken a liking to me. If I lift him onto the bed, he will crawl into the crook of my arm and press up against me. I am aware that any baby creature will seek something warm to cuddle up to, but I cannot help but be wholly delighted that the something, in this case, is me.
The dear creature doesn’t even mind when, if his nether regions become mucky, I scrub him in the basin. He seems to think it’s a kind of game. He bobs his head in and out of the water and opens and shuts his beak in a charming manner. Then he gives his whole body a shake, sending scattered droplets through the air. I scold him gently for making me wet, but it’s impossible to be angry with him.
Terry still shares feeding duties with me, but she is out for much of the day. She always rushes into my room on her return to see how Patrick is doing. Sometimes she measures and weighs him. Often she takes photos of us together for her blog.
“Have you noticed,” I asked her over supper last night, “that he recognizes his own name? He stretches his flippers out and widens his eyes whenever we say ‘Patrick.’ And sometimes opens his beak, too?”
“Yes, I’ve noticed,” she answered. “Well, we do use his name a lot.”
“You sometimes call him ‘little sausage,’” I pointed out. “But that has no reaction. It’s the name ‘Patrick’ that he recognizes.”
“He doesn’t know it’s his name,” Mike insisted with his usual acerbity. “You’ve heard of Pavlov’s dogs?”
“It does ring a bell,” I replied.
“Ha ha. Very droll.”
Dietrich takes it upon himself to expand. “Pavlov always rang a bell before feeding his dogs, as you’ll remember, Veronica. The dogs quickly began to associate the sound with food, so that, after a while, merely ringing the bell caused them to salivate in expectation. It’s probably similar with your Patrick. Baby penguins have very refined hearing. They can detect their own parents’ calls among the deafening furor of the rookery. You are Patrick’s substitute parent, and you say his name every time you feed him. It’s not surprising he’s come to recognize the word so quickly.”
Mike nods. “It is merely a primal response.”
Mike is committed to concealing any hint of softness in his character. He calls Patrick “that bird.” Right from the outset he was very sure that my baby penguin was going to die—and we all know that Mike doesn’t like being proved wrong. Yet sometimes, when he thinks nobody is looking, I catch him holding out a little tidbit of food for our new resident. And on his face is that rarest of things: a fond smile.