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Published: February 23rd 2007
A Waddle of African Penguins
With the sky according to Matt Groening. The area around the Boulders is beautiful. Cape National Parks has restricted the access to the beach where the penguins live. Which is undoubtedly for the best of all Though there's a very un-genuine feel to the "penguin-experience" with all the fences and board walks. P.S. There are easy ways to slip in without paying, for those who want to save 25 rand. The road was much longer than the fairy had expected, but it was more fun now when she had
Hindsight by her side, and as they wandered he got more and more talkative.
When they finally reached
the Boulders and sighted the first penguins, once again it was dusk.
“Hindsight! That wasn’t yesterday.” One of the penguins cried out and came jolting in their direction.
“What brings you down here?”
Hindsight told the fairy’s tale to the first penguin, and the story quickly spread like a wildfire among the chattering flightless birds. They all did their best to find a solution to the fairy’s predicament, but they all failed, and as the chattering calmed down, the first penguin announced:
“On the behalf of our fine and honourable colony; we don’t know! But if it’s one thing we penguins are good at, it’s finding things out.”
She puffed up her chest and raised her eyebrows.
“Wait here until tomorrow, while we swim out tonight to listen to the fishermen as they get drunk. Many secrets have been revealed there before.”
She looked even prouder as she gave away the penguins’ source of questionable information.
“Well I think it
Quickly Zpreading Wordz
For being birds they sure do swim well. They have heavier bones than normal birds which allow them to dive all the way down to 35m beneath the surface; they swim using their wings (that's more like flippers than wings) instead of their feet and can stay under water for 1 1/2 minute. sounds like a great idea.” The fairy said and Hindsight could but agree.
He said goodbye to the fairy and the waddle of penguins, and just as he left he quickly turned to the first penguin they’d met and blinked with his blood-ruby red eyes.
She blushed, like penguins do when they flirt and stood looking at Hindsight for a long time, as he scampered away with his long hairless tail. Then she turned to the fairy:
“Come, you can sleep with us at another cove, this one is just for the tourists. They come here in hordes so we work shift - twenty at a time - to stand here and play fools for the tourists and their trigger-happy camera fingers. The main colony we keep hidden two coves to the south, come.”
A few boulders later they were at the penguins’ real cove where they’d built a huge fortress of kelp.
At a kelp-throne a short funny looking penguin sat doing his best to look prominent.
“The wordz haz zpread!” He said but didn’t move his beak. The fairy assumed he was talking through his nose.
“Don’t mind him He had badly prepared Japanese blowfish in
Keep that Kelp Coming
The Kelp is a seaweed that can grow to extreme lenghts. Some of the different Kelp species grow as ast as half a metre a day and can become 50 metres long. The Kelp creates huge aquatic forest, home to innumerable aquatic species that depends solely on the Kelp forest for mating, safety and search for food. a restaurant once when we went on vacation. He hasn’t been well since, something with the head.” She pointed with her flipper to her temple and scrolled her eyes in wide circles.
“He’s my second husband. The first one is over there.”
She pointed at a penguin rocking a group of baby penguins in a kelp-cradle.
"My third and fourth husbands are out at sea, and it’s best for them that they wear their kelp-burqas.” She murmured and something dark appeared in her eyes.
“I’m the queen of the colony and my name is
Cleopengua.” She reached out her flipper for a high-five.
“Four husbands! Isn’t that three too many?” The strange set-up puzzled the fairy.
“You get used to it. I wouldn’t mind some more - after all, they’re not that productive - if you know what I mean.” She blinked with her eyes and smiled, then continued.
“Since we changed religion to
f’Ishlam fourteen years ago, everything has been just fine. You see that first husband of mine?”
The fairy looked at the penguin as he pulled a funny face and did baby talk with the infants.
“He used to be the king before. But
Riders of the Kelp
Dr Laporta browsing the canopy of the kelp forest with his surfboard, somewhere west of Vredenburg, Western Cape. then our great prophet
Muhamelissa read this new prophecy to us in a school of choir-fish, so we changed our whole social order.”
“I mean, we’ve had a patriarchal colony for 1600 years, it wasn’t more than fair to try something new. So now it will be matriarchal for the 1586 years to come. And let me tell you, I don’t miss my seaweed-veil for a single bit.”
“Wow, well I guess all social structures needs to be revised every now and then to prevent social stagnation and structural oppression within every society.” The fairy said in a you-go-sista’-tone.
“Exactly! The first thing I did was to end the grudge over barracudas we’ve had with the other penguin colonies, and then I moved the colony to
South Africa as a precaution. We used to stay on the part of
Antarctica that was claimed by the Norwegians and sooner or later the international outcry against their callous seal-clubbing will be so loud that they'll have to stop, and where do you think they would go then?”
“To Antarctica?”
“Exactly! Of course they won't be able to continue the slaughter of seals there, so guess what they'll massacre instead?”
“Fish?”
“No! Penguin!
She's got a ticket to ride
Slowly on her way into the city bowl using the Metrorail, a perfect option for anyone that wants to get mugged. Those berserk-oil-scallywags would aim with their hakapiks for the first penguin, I'm telling you! Maybe it's foregone conclusion but I'm not taking the risk with my colony. Besides, with all the kelp here and with apartheid now gone and all, I was ready for some African hakuna matata.”
She took some jolting dance steps and shook her voluptuous hips, then showed the fairy to a shelter built entirely of kelp.
Later in the night while the fairy was sleeping, a small raft of penguin commandos swam out to the fishing boats trawling in
False Bay. Carefully they listened to the fishermen's bragging and brooding on various matters.
As the fishermen fell asleep, the penguins climbed aboard and whispered questions in their ears, which the fishermen would answer in their sleep - not knowing so.
“
The Dreamweaver!”
The fairy opened her eyes and found Cleopengua in the kelp door opening, letting in the morning light.
“You must find the Dreamweaver. My best commandos - trained in hypnagogic sleep-talk - got that answer. Apparently he can mend anything with his special yarn, so two small fairy wings like yours should be of little trouble to him.”
Metrorail - a tumbling experience!
Cape Town's got a lively graffiti scene, and with graffiti culture there's always the unavoidable scrawling & scribbling on public transport. This is done by the graffiti artist to boast their egos within the subculture. Trust me. I know. “Do you know where I can find him?” The fairy asked as she rose from her kelp bed.
“Somewhere in the mother city. Here!” Cleopengua gave her a shell and a train ticket.
“We've gathered some of the coins that clumsy tourists dropped and bought you a ticket to the city. There, you could probably just ask around among the car-guards, they will almost certainly know where he is.” She smiled and continued.
“The shell is special gift to you. All the other shells in the ocean carry the sound of the sea, this one has no sound yet. You yourself must decide what sound to put into the shell.” She said and turned away.
“Now I have to go and get some quality time with my third husband. You know, a woman’s gotta do what a woman’s gotta do!”
The fairy then grabbed her little bag, said goodbye to the colony and walked down to the station.
After handing over the ticket, the fairy didn’t wait for long until the train started moving along the beautiful shoreline of False Bay.
Station by station, she slowly got closer to the city bowl.
As the train entered the
The Observer
He looked up from the telescope, more confused than before. Hmm, he pondered and decided to ask his cat for advice. Observatory station the conductor announced:
“We have a slight problem and have to stop this train here. We hope this doesn’t cause too much of an interruption to your travels! After all, this is
Africa.”
As all the other passengers left the train, so did the fairy. When she stepped down onto the platform a man in thick glasses and a peculiar hat hurried towards her.
“You’re twelve seconds late!”
“Late?”
“I really need to adjust the lens better, it must have been the diffractive optics-lens, should have never gone for a generic, or maybe it was the collimator?” The man said in a pondering voice while scratching his beard.
“I’m the
Observer, you see. I have a huge telescope here in Observatory, and I read in the stars this morning, as I had my breakfast peek at
Orion’s belt, that you would arrive now, or more precisely, 87 seconds ago.”
“Oh, how am I talking, we’re already 17 seconds late. Hurry, hurry. This is accurate science and we need to be exactly on time.”
He grabbed her arm and they hurried towards the observatory.
Well inside he quickly prepared seven cups of coffee that he downed at the
Huxlani The Cat
The cat yawned; she had spent too long time with the Observer to be in any rush. Make yourself some more coffee you know that always works. Yawn. Yawn. speed of creativity.
“You’re looking for the
Cape Fynbos Floral Kingdom I construe.”
“I am?” The fairy answered a bit confused and amazed by the coffee steam oozing out from his ears.
“You surely are.”
“Don’t you want to get your wings back on?”
“Yes, most so.” The fairy responded.
“But how could you know that?”
“I told you. I’m the observer. Here!”
He switched on numerous knobs and dials on the big telescope and tucked her in the direction of its eyepiece.
“Look, can you see the tail of that comet? That’s
C/206 P1 or
Comet McNaught as laymen would say. It’s the second brightest comet in the last 72 years. Have a look at its gaseous tail. What do you see?”
“A gaseous tail of a comet.”
“What if you squint a little while holding your breath?”
“It looks like a river, and a pepper-pot.”
The fairy gasped for air.
“Hmm. Interesting. If I align the pepper pots and multiply the longitude and the latitude with the altitude and the magnitude of your attitude. Ah! That’s what I thought. It’s just here, nearby in
Salt River. You can walk there in no time.”
He gave
He changed lens
And suddenly the fairy saw a street in Swacobmund, Namibia. "Very strange." The Observer told himself and took off the lens. her some food for the walk and sent her off in a cloud of coffee foam.
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Dabet M.
non-member comment
The Great Storyteller
Bobby, Such a nice way to keep us waiting for your next entry, The writing is great as the pictures are!. awesome job!, continue with a safe trip.