"Vicious creatures, they are, with great gnashing teeth. They might look cute but try keeping a cool head when they surround you on the ice in Antarctica." So sayeth my brother, Bobby, a retired Navy chief, North Pole explorer and now South Pole adventurer. During his recent visit to see us, he brought along videos of his trip to Antarctica by way of Bark Europa, a tall ship. Being an intrepid Brig Niagara tall ship sailor, home port of Erie, Pennsylvania, Bob, knows his stuff when it comes to the sea and mother nature.
So there we were watching his videos. "Don't look at this part, Jane." What a sweet guy, looking out for me like that. When the polar bears ate the seals in his North Pole pics, I hid my eyes as I did now, dread racing through my veins. A prayer of thanksgiving went up from me for Bob because he had survived yet again.
"I mean it. Cover your eyes. This is where the penguins attack me. Except for my tattered clothes, my wounds are healing pretty well," he told us. "The doctor said the scarring on my legs won't be too bad." These words came from my baby brother as fear of his reliving the attack worried me. How would he react? How would my husband react at seeing this savagery?
The camera's microphone picked up the sound of the frigid wind and the occasional squawk of an albatross or some sea bird. I couldn't look. I could only listen. And as I listened, I remembered how, from earlier photos, Europa was anchored in deeper water. There was little Bob and his mates could do to save themselves, except wield weapons. A last resort would be the crack of gunfire but it might cause the fragile iceberg on which they stood to cleave, throwing them into the iced water. A man could live for two minutes in that water he had said.
As my hands still covered my eyes, I waited for his gasps, his screams, hardly able to contain my own at the very idea of his enduring the gnawing teeth and claws of those heinous penguins so often portrayed as cuddly creatures. I waited, listening. I waited, wondering. I waited until I could wait no longer. "Can I look? Is it over?"
"It's safe now," said Bob. Slowly, very slowly, I spread my fingers, peeking through them. I can see Bobby wearing his orange thermal snow pants. But he isn't alone. He is surrounded by the vile, smelly black and white creatures. He is under attack! Attack? One little guy takes three nibbles on his pants, pooh-poohs them from his mouth as if it tasted like a rotten piece of fish, unworthy of being eaten by a grand penguin and then, like Charlie Chaplin, waddled away.
That's when it happened. Bobby and Bruce burst out laughing. Oh, I got the joke, all right. My sweet gullible self had been snookered by my prankster brother and go-along husband, yet again. My first mistake, as they say, is I believed him, again. Shame on me!
My reward for experiencing such treatment was this official lapis and mother of pearl silver penguin necklace Bobby brought me from Ushuaia, the capital city of Tierra del Fuego Province, Argentina, the southernmost city in the world and the last gift shop on earth on the way to Antarctica.
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