Rodney: Enemas
A homeless Southern Right penguin, found covered in guano, walking in clockwise circles and eating from a rubbish bin behind the parliament buildings in Molesworth Street, central Wellington, is recovering slowly in the city’s animal hospital. He has required several stomach pumpings and enemas to siphon garbage out of him, all of which have been only partially successful so far.
Its rescuers nicknamed the penguin “Two Left Feet” because of his peculiar clumsy dance-like movements and his inability to make left turns when either dancing or walking. He has to walk around in a wide clockwise circle to reach an object one metre to his left, and often forgets where he is going in the meantime.
It later transpired that the penguin, a former inmate of the Thorndon Marine Zoo whose real name was Rodney, had fled from his enclosure when Donny the Hard Right orca leapt into it and took over, eating some of Rodney’s family and forcing him out on the street to fend for himself.
Southern Right penguins and Hard Right orcas have only rudimentary social skills and appear to lack any kind of empathy with other animals. Their major activity consists of finding and hoarding food, usually stealing it from other sea creatures even when they have more than enough for themselves. Most of their food stores are left to rot rather than being eaten, while being guarded jealously with vicious attacks on any underfed animal attempting to get some.
Rodney will finally be released into the wild on Saturday 26 November after being extensively rehabilitated and de-institutionalised. On release, a tracking device attached to his back will monitor his movements and an explosive charge housed inside it can be detonated if he shows signs of going anywhere near parliament grounds.
Its rescuers nicknamed the penguin “Two Left Feet” because of his peculiar clumsy dance-like movements and his inability to make left turns when either dancing or walking. He has to walk around in a wide clockwise circle to reach an object one metre to his left, and often forgets where he is going in the meantime.
It later transpired that the penguin, a former inmate of the Thorndon Marine Zoo whose real name was Rodney, had fled from his enclosure when Donny the Hard Right orca leapt into it and took over, eating some of Rodney’s family and forcing him out on the street to fend for himself.
Southern Right penguins and Hard Right orcas have only rudimentary social skills and appear to lack any kind of empathy with other animals. Their major activity consists of finding and hoarding food, usually stealing it from other sea creatures even when they have more than enough for themselves. Most of their food stores are left to rot rather than being eaten, while being guarded jealously with vicious attacks on any underfed animal attempting to get some.
Rodney will finally be released into the wild on Saturday 26 November after being extensively rehabilitated and de-institutionalised. On release, a tracking device attached to his back will monitor his movements and an explosive charge housed inside it can be detonated if he shows signs of going anywhere near parliament grounds.
Zoo staff are pessimistic, however, as Rodney's tracking device has fallen silent upon his release back into the wild and many believe that this time there was no saving the ungainly creature from the predations of the Hard Right orcas.
K Vicious
NZ GUTTER PRESS
