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.”
“It’s the weekend. Maybe she’s having a lie-in,” shivered Blue.
“She’s lying, all right,” said Rory, stamping his frozen flippers. “Muriel hasn’t got a plan; she’s all beak. She’s not coming.”
They were just about to leave when Waldo flung his door open.
“What are you doing out there, darlings?” squealed the chinstrap penguin. “You’ll catch your death! We might originate from the Antarctic, but this weather is enough to freeze the bits off an Inuit… Come in!”
He ushered them into the warmth of his hutch. It was too warm, if anything, because, among the numerous items of lost property left behind at City Zoo over the years, there was a disposable barbecue, which Waldo had just lit with a box of matches stolen by the elephant from its keeper’s pocket.
There was an unwritten rule among the animals that any items of interest they found should be passed to Waldo, who used them to create collages and sculptures with his fellow artists, Warren and Wesley. They were already in the hutch, sitting at the table in front of a box of bits-and-pieces, and were making something. While it came as no surprise to see the Arty Party Penguins there, Rory and Blue hadn’t expected to see the peculiar-looking creature perched
