A new Goldman State Podcast drops every Friday!
Non-sanguine Penguin Descendants Descend Upon Me
What happens when you have 230 identical offspring?
By Ed Goldman
Item: Maryland Zoo’s “Mr. Greedy” died…after fathering 230 penguins and helping rebuild the species’ population in zoos across North America… He lived to see five generations of offspring fathered through the zoo’s African Penguin Species Survival Plan. – CBS News
It isn’t every day I answer a knock on my front door and find two penguins standing there. Yet this is exactly what happens the other afternoon. Exactly. Swear to God.
Yes?” I ask.
Waddle-gait break-in
“Is that a question or an answer?” asks the more outgoing penguin, who sounds a great deal like Groucho Marx. “If it’s a question, the answer is, ‘My client and I are here to see you and ready to talk, plenty.’ But if it’s an answer, I don’t remember asking a question.”
Definitely Groucho, I think. Everything but the cigar and greasepaint mustache. Okay, and opposable thumbs. But I try to keep an open mind.
“It was a question on a par with the operatic ‘Who’s that knocking at my door?’ cried the fair young maiden,’” I say, possibly singing the little refrain.
“If that’s a reference to a Popeye cartoon in which his nemesis Bluto sings in response to Olive Oyl, ‘It’s me, myself/And nobody else/ It’s Barnacle Bill the Sailor,’ then I’m all ears,” Groucho says, quickly adding, “Not that I have ears, but you get the idea. In fact, it may be the first idea you’ll get in 2025.”
The reincarnation of the fastest comic mind in history as a penguin is irresistible. But I‘m on a deadline at the time so I say, “Just tell me why you knocked on my door.”
“The bell-a didn’t-a work-a,” the other penguin now chimes in.
“So this one’s doing Chico Marx,” I say to “Groucho.”
“What gave him away? The pidgin-Italian accent?” Groucho asks. I nod. “We’ll, he didn’t have time to learn a penguin-Italian accent,” he says.
After more of what Groucho might deem good badinage or bad goodinage, he comes to the point. “I’m representing the 230 penguins fathered by the deceased ‘Mister Greedy,'” he says. “You can imagine how difficult an estate this is going to be to settle. Two-hundred completely identical aquatic, flightless birds.”
“Identical?” I ask. “I thought there were several different types of penguins.”
“And there are any number of white Rotarians,” Groucho retorts. “Can you tell them apart?”
“Of course, I–“
“I’ll grant you we have the emperor, gentoo, chinstrap, adélie, king, southern rockhopper and macaroni penguin,” he enumerates without consulting Google even once. “But when it comes down to it, we’re all the same guy. Even the girls are guys, as we sometimes discover on dates that end badly. Even for the erect-crested penguin, whom you’d think would–“
“Look,” I say, “this is getting a little weird.”
“I’ll bet that was your nickname as a kid.”
Letting that pass—while wondering who his spot-on source was— I ask, “What do you want me to do?”
“Well, I understand you write a column,” Groucho says. “I say I ‘understand’ you write a column even though, for the life of me, I rarely understand it. I thought maybe you can write about our situation. Not that I’m suggesting you can write but even if it’s just A-I churning out these things, the publicity wouldn’t hurt our cause. And why won’t you let us into your condo? I feel like a Jehovah’s Penguin standing on your stoop so long. Should I have brought some pamphlets?”
“I’m sorry,” I say, allowing them entry into my living room. “I forgot my manners.”
That’s what the absent-minded landowner said,” Groucho snaps. “Only he spelled them differently. Just like the absent-minded witch did when she couldn’t remember which curse she’d laid on which person. She’d misspelled them. God, I hate explaining jokes.”
“I’m sure God does, too,” I say, trying to get into the spirit of this madness.
The penguins don’t stay long when it turns out I have neither krill nor squid in the fridge to offer as appetizers. As they leave I promise to write about our encounter but ask if they’re approaching writers with far more reach than mine.
“Well, that would be just about anybody,” Groucho says as he and Chico waddle past me and out the door. I step outside to see them off and discover hordes of penguins in my community, all approaching, entering or exiting other condos. I shout to Groucho that, as far as I know, I’m the only one in my nabe with a column.
“Not a problem,” he says. “They’re not with us. They’re handing out religious pamphlets.”
Ed Goldman's column appears almost every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. A former daily columnist for the Sacramento Business Journal, as well as monthly columnist for Sacramento Magazine and Comstock’s Business Magazine, he’s the author of five books, two plays and one musical (so far).