Ocean Sunday: The Secret of PercythePenguin
(using puppet)
My name is Percy. I am a tiny fairy penguin. I live on a rocky island with other fairy penguins, like Penelope and Pamela.
I cannot fly. But I can swim and swim and swim. I am very clippery in the water? Can you swim? I bet you can’t catch me.
Well, one day something bad happened. A big ship filled with oil ran into rocks near my island, smashed open and thick black oil floated on the water…everywhere. It was coming toward my island and about to surround it. A big black blanket of slippery evil oil! A few of my friends had already become covered with thick black oil. Would you like that? What would it feel like? Well for penguins that is very bad and we knew we would all die if oil covered our island…and us.
Then some human friends came in a boat. They ran after us and caught us. We can swim fast but not run fast. They put us all in this big boat and took us away from the island as the evil oil began to cover the island—our home!
Where would they take us? That island was our home! Well, they took us to another island a thousand miles away. That is a long way from home for a tiny fairy penguin.
What do you think we did? Guess?
Well, we started to swim across the ocean to home, no matter how long it took. Could you find your way home if you were in the ocean andbcould not see your home or where you were?
Well, fairy penguins can. You see, God put into our heads a bit of wisdom, a compass, a little thing that points us toward home no matter where we are.
So we started swimming home across the ocean. We met other birds, like pelicans, who said, ‘Stay here with us!’
We met dolphins who gave us a ride for a while and said, ‘Change your direction. There are sharks near here. They will eat you! You are on you own.’
So, we made a but detour and went round the sharks and swam and swam. Once in a while we found a tiny fish to eat. But we kept going because we wanted to get home.
It took weeks and months of swimming. Then one day we saw it. Our island, our home!
When we landed most of the oil had been washed away and we could live in our home again. Do you know what we did when we landed? We hopped from rock to rock and danced a penguin dance. We hugged each other with our tiny wings.
And we said thanks to God for that tin bit of wisdom inside us, that little thing that penguins have inside their heads that point us to home no matter where we are!
So let’s do the penguin hop and thank God.
I’m a fairy penguin they call Perce!
Feathers think with oil. Now what could be worse!
I was taken off where I could roam.
But I just kept swimming till I got home!
(PS. This is a true story of what happened on a island near Capetown in 2002.)