Читать книгу Penguin Pandemonium - The Wild Beast - Жанна Уиллис - Страница 6

aturday at City Zoo was usually the busiest day of the week, but not today. And not last week either. For some strange reason, the crowd that normally gathered to see the penguins had shrunk to almost nothing. It was all very sudden and none of them could understand it, least of all Rory the rockhopper.

Rory had been waiting all morning for people to arrive. He was keen to show off his latest belly-sliding stunt that he’d been practising with his mates, Eddie and Clive, but nobody came. Rory waddled across the snow and gazed up at the webcam suspended above the enclosure. It recorded everything the penguins did and, when they appeared on the internet, people usually came from far and wide to see them. So what had changed?

The way Rory saw it, only two things could have happened: either penguins had gone out of fashion or Penguin Cam had a technical fault. The first reason was unthinkable – everybody loved penguins. It had to be the second reason. It had been a long, hard winter, the frost must have cracked the lens and, as no one could see them in action any more, people might have forgotten that the penguins existed.

Rory decided to investigate, but the camera was high up and his legs were so short he couldn’t see, so he jumped up and down as hard as he could, kicking his feet and flapping his flippers to gain some extra height.

“Yoo hoo!” he called. “Is anybody out there? Come and see me! Why don’t you love me any more?”

“Maybe it’s the way you dance,” said a voice. “Or are you hopping about because you need the toilet?”

Rory swung round. It was his best friend, Blue, the fairy penguin. He stopped bouncing and pushed back his head feathers to hide his embarrassment.

“That was not a toilet dance, Fish Face. I was checking to see if Penguin Cam was broken. If people could see how talented and handsome I am, they’d be here by now.”

“Maybe the lens cracked when you looked at it,” grinned Blue.

Just then, the two brown bears who lived in the paddock above the penguins butted in. Orson leant over the rails and squinted at the camera.

“There’s nothing wrong with it,” he said.

“Yes, there is,” insisted Ursie, “it’s pointing at the penguins instead of the bears. We’re far more entertaining – we sing, we dance, we tinkle on the ivories.”

Rory’s beak fell open.

“You tinkle on the what? Can’t you go behind a bush like everyone else?”

The bears looked at him blankly, then, realising he’d misunderstood the phrase, they slapped their furry thighs and guffawed.

“Oooh… I’m laughing so hard, I’ve tinkled on my ivories!” snorted Ursie, stuffing his paws between his legs.

“Me too!” said Orson. “Just goes to show how little penguins know about entertainment. Fancy not knowing that tinkling the ivories is showbiz for playing the piano.”

The bears could be very irritating and Rory was beginning to lose his temper.

“You haven’t got a piano!” he yelled.

“No, but if we did, it would be a good way to lure the visitors back,” said Orson, pretending to play a few imaginary chords. “No one’s coming to see us either. Do you know why?”

Rory scratched his head. “Maybe it’s the weather.”

“I bet Rory’s right,” said Blue. “Maybe people can’t get to the zoo because of the snow.”

Orson shook his head.

“Wrong! There are more visitors than ever, aren’t there, Ursie?”

“Record numbers,” agreed Ursie, “but they’re not coming to see you or us because of You Know Who.”

“What’s You Know Who, Rory?” whispered Blue.

“You know,” he said casually. He had no idea who Ursie was talking about either, but he wasn’t going to admit that to the bears – he was hoping that one of them might let it out of the bag without him having to ask. By now, both bears had climbed up their tree to get a better look.

“You should see the queue for the new enclosure below yours,” said Orson. “It’s enormous!”

“Rory, Orson said it was enormous,” hissed Blue. “Maybe it’s a new kind of elephant.”

Rory shrugged. “I thought he was talking about the queue. Or the enclosure.”

Blue spoke to him behind her flipper so the bears couldn’t hear. “If it’s an enormous enclosure, whatever is in there must be huge, mustn’t it, Rory.”

Before he could answer, Muriel waddled over with her girly gang of fairy penguins and demanded to know what was going on.

“I hope you’re not talking about me behind my back, Bloop,” she said. “It’s very rude to whisper.”

She prodded the smaller of her two friends in the tummy. “Brenda, isn’t it rude to whisper?”

“Y…es?” whispered Brenda.

Muriel was very bossy and Brenda found it much easier to agree with everything she said, even if she didn’t.

“Actually, Muriel, we’ve got better things to talk about than you,” said Blue.

Muriel preened herself and did a little shimmy.

“Really? I don’t think so. What could possibly be better than me?”

Blue pointed down below. “There’s a new animal in there. We’re not sure what it is, but we think it’s very large.”

Muriel put both flippers round the tubbier member of her gang and measured her chubby waistline. “What? Larger than Hatty?”

“I’m big-boned,” wailed Hatty.

“Much larger than Hatty,” said Blue. “And let’s hope it’s not as mean as you are.”

Muriel twisted her beak into a sneer and was trying to think of a witty reply when Orson and Ursie burst into song.

“What is the terrible beast in the zoo?

Nobody knows and we haven’t a clue.

A hippophant, maybe? A rhinoceroo?

What is it? Why is it? How is it? Who?

Maybe it’s an Elephong covered in hairs,

A great woolly mammoth – like anyone cares.

Whatever it is that lives under the stairs,

It can’t be as fabulous as the brown bears!”

Whatever it was, the crowd below had grown bigger. Even the singing bears couldn’t draw their attention away from the mysterious new exhibit. Muriel went over to the viewing grille in the wall of the penguin enclosure, poked her beak through and looked down on to the rows of heads below.

“What’s the big attraction?” she screeched. “What are you looking at? You should be looking at me!”

Not one person turned round and if there was one thing Muriel hated, it was being ignored.

“I’m not standing for this, are we, Hatty and Brenda!” she raged, grabbing them both by the flippers. “Come along, we’re going to teach those visitors to look up to the penguins.”

“How?” said Hatty. “Are we going to sing a song?”

“Are we going to do a cute group hug in front of them?” wondered Brenda.

Muriel put her flipper down her throat and gagged.

“No, I’m sick of cute, they’re sick of cute. We’re going to have to play dirty… Poop, poop!”

She marched them over to the viewing grille, sat down and pushed her tail through the hole above the crowd.

“Hatty,” frowned Brenda, “did Muriel mean it when she said poop?”

“She must have done. She said it twice,” said Hatty.

Muriel squeezed her eyes shut.

“Stop twittering and poop! Aim for their hats, girls… One, two, three and FIRE!”

Blue and Rory stared in disbelief as Muriel and her friends lifted their tails and squirted droppings all over the visitors. Some of them thought it had started to rain, but when they smelt what had landed on them, they realised it was nothing to do with the weather and everything to do with the row of little birds sitting above them.

“Made you look, made you stare, penguin poop is in your hair!” cackled Muriel, dancing up and down triumphantly. Even the brown bears were shocked.

“Imagine if we’d done that instead of going in the woods,” grunted Orson.

“Terrible behaviour,” said Ursie. “I wish we’d thought of it.”

Muriel didn’t care what anyone thought. She was so pleased with herself, she didn’t notice that the penguin keeper had arrived and was being set upon by angry visitors, demanding that he paid their dry-cleaning bills. Rory watched the scene and put his head in his flippers.

“Muriel, how could you stoop so low?”

“Easy! I just bent my knees,” she sniggered. “Hatty, Brenda, did you hear my joke? Rory said, ‘How did you stoop so low?’ And I said, ‘I just bent my knees…’ Now laugh!”

“Ha ha,” said Hatty flatly, deeply ashamed of what she’d just done.

“Hee hee,” said Brenda, who was even more embarrassed.

But when feeding time came, Muriel finally understood that what she’d done wasn’t funny in the slightest. Thinking that the fairy penguins must have terrible upset stomachs after the pooping incident, the keeper was afraid that the other penguins might catch the same bug and dosed their supper with medicine. It tasted so awful, even Rory’s permanently hungry friends, Eddie and Clive, were struggling to force it down.

“Does this mackerel taste fishy to you, Clive?” said Eddie.

“Don’t be squidiculous,” said Clive. “Of course it tastes fishy, it’s fish— Eughh… No, it’s not, it’s foul!”

Big Paulie, the boss of them all, took one peck and choked so hard, Rory had to slap him on the back.

“This fish has been tampered with!” spluttered the mighty emperor penguin.

“I think it’s been medicated,” said Blue, gargling with snow to try and get rid of the taste. Paulie sniffed the fish and screwed up his beak.

“Medicated? Nobody’s ill. What’s going on?”

None of the penguins said a word, but they all found themselves staring at Muriel, who was trying to hide behind Hatty and Brenda.

“What?” said Muriel. “Why is everyone looking at me?”

Big Paulie flapped his fish in her face.

“Is the reason I’m having to swallow this, something to do with you?”

“It was Hatty and Brenda!” blurted Muriel. “Wasn’t it, Brenda and Hatty?”

Blue was about to leap to their defence when the brown bears stuck their noses in and told Paulie the whole story. When he heard about the pooping plot, his eyebrow feathers shot over the back of his head and, throwing his flippers up in the air, he confronted the ringleader.

“You did this to our visitors? You pooped on the people who pay for our pilchards?”

Muriel shuffled her feet. “I was only trying to get them to come and see us instead of the new animal.”

“Animal shmanimal!” snapped Paulie. “I’m not interested. We are a polite and dignified species and, thanks to you, our reputation has just gone down the toilet. I’m ashamed to be called a penguin.”

“It was just a joke,” muttered Muriel, nudging Brenda sharply in the ribs.

“Ha ha,” said Brenda nervously.

“Do I look like I’m laughing?” screeched Paulie. “I was going to give you all a wonderful surprise, but, thanks to Muriel, you can forget it!”

All the penguins took a step backwards as he stomped over to his palace without a second glance.

“I wonder what the surprise was?” sighed Blue.

“We’ll never know now, will we?” said Rory.

Muriel stopped looking at her feet and turned on him.

“Oh my cod! Why is everyone blaming me? It’s not my fault – is it, Hatty and Brenda?”

But Hatty and Brenda were so upset about not having a surprise, they pretended to be deaf.

“No one is going to come and visit us now. Not after what you did,” said Blue.

Seeing that no one was on her side – not even her best friends – Muriel had no option but to try and win everybody back, including the visitors.

“I’ll make it up to you,” she said. “I have a brilliant plan. You’re going to love me for it.”

“I wouldn’t go that far,” said Rory. “But let’s hear it, anyway.”

Muriel folded her flippers and took a deep breath.

“All right, I’ll tell you… in the morning,” she said. “Meet me at Waldo’s hutch at dawn.”