Mr. Popper's Penguins Read online

  “I guess this is what you call the rookery,” said Mr. Popper. “Only he couldn’t find any stones to build his nest with.”

  “Well,” said Mrs. Popper, “those penguins may have heathen ways at the South Pole, but I declare I think this one is going to be quite a help around the house.”

  “Ork!” said Captain Cook, and strutting into the living room, he knocked over the best lamp.

  “I think, Papa,” said Mrs. Popper, “that you had better take Captain Cook outside for a little exercise. Good gracious, but you’re all dressed up. Why, you look almost like a penguin yourself.”

  Mr. Popper had smoothed down his hair and shaved off his whiskers. Never again would Mrs. Popper have to reproach him for looking as wild as a lion. He had put on a white shirt with a white tie and white flannel trousers, and a pair of bright tan, oxblood shoes. He had got out of the cedar chest his old black evening tailcoat, that he had been married in, and brushed it carefully, and put it on, too.

  He did indeed look a little like a penguin. He turned and strutted like one now, for Mrs. Popper.

  But he did not forget his duty to Captain Cook.

  “Can I have a few yards of clothesline, please, Mamma?” asked Mr. Popper.

  Chapter VIII

  Penguin’s Promenade

  MR. POPPER SOON FOUND that it was not so easy to take a penguin for a stroll.

  Captain Cook did not care at first for the idea of being put on a leash. However, Mr. Popper was firm. He tied one end of the clothesline to the penguin’s fat throat and the other to his own wrist.

  “Ork!” said Captain Cook indignantly. Still, he was a very reasonable sort of bird, and when he saw that protesting did him no good, he recovered his customary dignity and decided to let Mr. Popper lead him.

  Mr. Popper put on his best Sunday derby and opened the front door with Captain Cook waddling graciously beside him.

  “Gaw,” said the penguin, stopping at the edge of the porch to look down at the steps.

  Mr. Popper gave him plenty of clothesline leash.

  “Gook!” said Captain Cook, and raising his flippers, he leaned forward bravely and tobogganed down the steps on his stomach.

  Mr. Popper followed, though not in the same way. Captain Cook quickly got up on his feet again and strutted to the street ahead of Mr. Popper with many quick turns of his head and pleased comments on the new scene.

  Down Proudfoot Avenue came a neighbor of the Poppers, Mrs. Callahan, with her arms full of groceries. She stared in astonishment when she saw Captain Cook and Mr. Popper, looking like a larger penguin himself in his black tailcoat.

  “Heavens have mercy on us!” she exclaimed as the bird began to investigate the striped stockings under her house dress. “It isn’t an owl and it isn’t a goose.”

  “It isn’t,” said Mr. Popper, tipping his Sunday derby. “It’s an Antarctic penguin, Mrs. Callahan.”

  “Get away from me,” said Mrs. Callahan to Captain Cook. “An anteater, is it?”

  “Not anteater,” explained Mr. Popper. “Antarctic. It was sent to me from the South Pole.”

  “Take your South Pole goose away from me at once,” said Mrs. Callahan.

  Mr. Popper pulled obediently at the clothesline, while Captain Cook took a parting peck at Mrs. Callahan’s striped stockings.

  “Heaven preserve us!” said Mrs. Callahan. “I must stop in and see Mrs. Popper at once. I would never have believed it. I will be going now.”

  “So will I,” said Mr. Popper as Captain Cook dragged him off down the street.

  Their next stop was at the drugstore at the corner of Proudfoot Avenue and Main Street. Here Captain Cook insisted on looking over the window display, which consisted of several open packages of shiny white boric crystals. These he evidently mistook for polar snow, for he began to peck at the window vigorously.

  Suddenly a car wheeled to the near-by curb with a shriek of its brakes, and two young men sprang out, one of them bearing a camera.

  “This must be it,” said the first young man to the other.

  “It’s them, all right,” said the second young man.

  The cameraman set up his tripod on the sidewalk. By this time a small crowd had gathered around, and two men in white coats had even come out of the drugstore to watch. Captain Cook, however, was still too much interested in the window exhibits to bother to turn around.

  “You’re Mr. Popper of 432 Proudfoot Avenue, aren’t you?” asked the second young man, pulling a notebook out of his pocket.

  “Yes,” said Mr. Popper, realizing that his picture was about to be taken for the newspaper. The two young men had, as a matter of fact, heard about the strange bird from the policeman, and had been on their way to the Popper house, to get an interview, when they saw Captain Cook.

  “Hey, pelican, turn around and see the pretty birdie,” said the photographer.

  “That’s no pelican,” said the other, who was a reporter. “Pelicans have a pouch in their bills.”

  “I’d think it was a dodo, only dodos are extinct. This will make an elegant picture, if I can ever get her to turn around.”

  “It’s a penguin,” said Mr. Popper proudly. “Its name is Captain Cook.”

  “Gook!” said the penguin, turning around, now that they were talking about him. Spying the camera tripod, he walked over and examined it.

  “Probably thinks it’s a three-legged stork,” said the photographer.

  “This bird of yours — ” said the reporter. “Is it a he or a she? The public will want to know.”

  Mr. Popper hesitated. “Well, I call it Captain Cook.”

  “That makes it a he,” said the reporter, writing rapidly in his notebook.

  Still curious, Captain Cook started walking round and round the tripod, till the clothesline, the penguin, Mr. Popper and the tripod were all tangled up. At the advice of one of the bystanders, the tangle was finally straightened out by Mr. Popper’s walking around the tripod three times in the opposite direction. At last, Captain Cook, standing still beside Mr. Popper, consented to pose.

  Mr. Popper straightened his tie, and the cameraman snapped the picture. Captain Cook shut his eyes, and this is the way his picture appeared later in all the newspapers.

  “One last question,” said the reporter. “Where did you get your strange pet?”

  “From Admiral Drake, the South Pole explorer. He sent him to me for a present.”

  “Yeah,” said the reporter. “Anyway, it’s a good story.”

  The two young men jumped into their car. Mr. Popper and Captain Cook continued their walk, with quite a crowd following and asking questions. The crowd was getting so thick that, in order to escape, Mr. Popper led Captain Cook into a barbershop.

  The man who kept the barbershop had, up to this time, been a very good friend of Mr. Popper’s.

  Chapter IX

  In the Barber Shop

  IT WAS VERY QUIET in the barbershop. The barber was shaving an elderly gentleman.

  Captain Cook found this spectacle very interesting, and in order to get a better view, he jumped up on the mirror ledge.

  “Good night!” said the barber.

  The gentleman in the barber’s chair, his face already white with lather, half-lifted his head to see what had happened.

  “Gook!” said the penguin, flapping his flippers and reaching out his long beak toward the lather on the gentleman’s face.

  With a yell and a leap, the gentleman rose from his reclining position, left the barber’s chair, and fled into the street, not even stopping for his coat and hat.

  “Gaw!” said Captain.

  “Hey,” said the barber to Mr. Popper. “Take that thing out of my shop. This is no zoo. What’s the idea?”

  “Do you mind if I take him out your back door?” asked Mr. Popper.

  “Any door,” said the barber, “as long as it’s quick. Now it’s biting the teeth off my combs.”

  Mr. Popper took Captain Cook in his arms, and amid cries of “Quo
rk?” “Gawk!” and “Ork!” made his way out of the shop and its back room and out a door into an alley.

  Captain Cook now discovered his first back stairway.

  Mr. Popper discovered that when a penguin has found steps going up somewhere, it is absolutely impossible to keep him from climbing them.

  “All right,” said Mr. Popper, panting up the steps behind Captain Cook. “I suppose, being a bird, and one that can’t fly, you have to go up in the air somehow, so you like to climb stairs. Well, it’s a good thing this building has only three stories. Come on. Let’s see what you can do.”

  Slowly but unwearyingly, Captain Cook lifted one pink foot after another from one step to the next, followed by Mr. Popper at the other end of the clothesline.

  At last they came to the top landing.

  “Now what?” inquired Mr. Popper of Captain Cook.

  Finding there were no more steps to climb, Captain Cook turned around and surveyed the steps that now went down.

  Then he raised his flippers and leaned forward.

  Mr. Popper, who was still panting for breath, had not supposed the determined bird would plunge so quickly. He should have remembered that penguins will toboggan whenever they get a chance.

  Perhaps he had been unwise in tying one end of the clothesline to his own wrist.

  At any rate, this time Mr. Popper found himself suddenly sliding, on his own white-clad stomach, down the three flights of steps. This delighted the penguin, who was enjoying his own slide just ahead of Mr. Popper.

  When they reached the bottom, Captain Cook was so eager to go up again that Mr. Popper had to call a taxi, to distract him.

  “432 Proudfoot Avenue,” said Mr. Popper to the driver.

  The driver, who was a kind and polite man, did not laugh at his oddly assorted passengers until he had been paid.

  “Oh dear!” said Mrs. Popper, when she opened the door to her husband. “You looked so neat and handsome when you started for your walk. And now look at the front of you!”

  “I am sorry, my love,” said Mr. Popper in a humble tone, “but you can’t always tell what a penguin will do next.”

  So saying, he went to lie down, for he was quite exhausted from all the unusual exercise, while Captain Cook had a shower and took a nap in the icebox.

  Chapter X

  Shadows

  NEXT DAY THE PICTURE of Mr. Popper and Captain Cook appeared in the Stillwater Morning Chronicle, with a paragraph about the house painter who had received a penguin by air express from Admiral Drake in the faraway Antarctic. Then the Associated Press picked up the story, and a week later the photograph, in rotogravure, could be seen in the Sunday edition of the most important newspapers in all the large cities in the country.

  Naturally the Poppers all felt very proud and happy.

  Captain Cook was not happy, however. He had suddenly ceased his gay, exploring little walks about the house, and would sit most of the day, sulking, in the refrigerator. Mrs. Popper had removed all the stranger objects, leaving only the marbles and checkers, so that Captain Cook now had a nice, orderly little rookery.

  “He won’t play with us any more,” said Bill. “I tried to get some of my marbles from him, and he tried to bite me.”

  “Naughty Captain Cook,” said Janie.

  “Better leave him alone, children,” said Mrs. Popper. “He feels mopey, I guess.”

  But it was soon clear that it was something worse than mopiness that ailed Captain Cook. All day he would sit with his little white-circled eyes staring out sadly from the refrigerator. His coat had lost its lovely, glossy look; his round little stomach grew flatter every day.

  He would turn away now when Mrs. Popper would offer him some canned shrimps.

  One evening she took his temperature. It was one hundred and four degrees.

  “Well, Papa,” she said, “I think you had better call the veterinary doctor. I am afraid Captain Cook is really ill.”

  But when the veterinary came, he only shook his head. He was a very good animal doctor, and though he had never taken care of a penguin before, he knew enough about birds to see at a glance that this one was seriously ill.

  “I will leave you some pills. Give him one every hour. Then you can try feeding him on sherbet and wrapping him in ice packs. But I cannot give you any encouragement because I am afraid it is a hopeless case. This kind of bird was never made for this climate, you know. I can see that you have taken good care of him, but an Antarctic penguin can’t thrive in Stillwater.”

  That night the Poppers sat up all night, taking turns changing the ice packs.

  It was no use. In the morning Mrs. Popper took Captain Cook’s temperature again. It had gone up to one hundred and five.

  Everyone was very sympathetic. The reporter on the Morning Chronicle stopped in to inquire about the penguin. The neighbors brought in all sorts of broths and jellies to try to tempt the little fellow. Even Mrs. Callahan, who had never had a very high opinion of Captain Cook, made a lovely frozen custard for him. Nothing did any good. Captain Cook was too far gone.

  He slept all day now in a heavy stupor, and everyone was saying that the end was not far away.

  All the Poppers had grown terribly fond of the funny, solemn little chap, and Mr. Popper’s heart was frozen with terror. It seemed to him that his life would be very empty if Captain Cook went away.

  Surely someone would know what to do for a sick penguin. He wished that there were some way of asking advice of Admiral Drake, away down at the South Pole, but there was not time.

  In his despair, Mr. Popper had an idea. A letter had brought him his pet. He sat down and wrote another letter.

  It was addressed to Dr. Smith, the Curator of the great Aquarium in Mammoth City, the largest in the world. Surely if anyone anywhere had any idea what could cure a dying penguin, this man would.

  Two days later there was an answer from the Curator. “Unfortunately,” he wrote, “it is not easy to cure a sick penguin. Perhaps you do not know that we too have, in our aquarium at Mammoth City, a penguin from the Antarctic. It is failing rapidly, in spite of everything we have done for it. I have wondered lately whether it is not suffering from loneliness. Perhaps that is what ails your Captain Cook. I am, therefore, shipping you, under separate cover, our penguin. You may keep her. There is just a chance that the birds may get on better together.”

  And that is how Greta came to live at 432 Proudfoot Avenue.

  Chapter XI

  Greta

  SO CAPTAIN COOK did not die, after all.

  There were two penguins in the refrigerator, one standing and one sitting on the nest under the ice cubes.

  “They’re as like as two peas,” said Mrs. Popper.

  “As two penguins, you mean,” answered Mr. Popper.

  “Yes, but which is which?”

  At this moment the standing penguin jumped out of the icebox, reached inside and took one of the checkers from under the sitting penguin, whose eyes were closed in sleep, and laid it at Mr. Popper’s feet.

  “See, Mamma, he’s thanking me,” said Mr. Popper, patting the penguin. “At the South Pole that’s the way a penguin shows its friendship, only it uses a stone instead of a checker. This one must be Captain Cook, and he’s trying to show that he’s grateful to us for getting him Greta and saving his life.”

  “Yes, but how are we going to tell them apart? It’s very confusing.”

  “I will go down in the cellar and get some white paint and paint their names on their black backs.”

  And he opened the cellar door and started down, nearly tripping when Captain Cook unexpectedly tobogganed down after him. When he came up again, Mr. Popper had a brush and a small paint-can in his hands, while the penguin had a white CAPT. COOK on his back.

  “Gook!” said Captain Cook, proudly showing his name to the penguin in the icebox.

  “Gaw!” said the sitting Penguin, and then squirming around in her nest, she turned her back to Mr. Popper.

  So Mr. Po
pper sat down on the floor in front of the icebox, while Captain Cook watched, first with one eye, then with the other.

  “What are you going to call her?” asked Mrs. Popper.

  “Greta.”

  “It’s a nice name,” said Mrs. Popper, “and she seems like a nice bird, too. But the two of them fill the icebox, and pretty soon there will be eggs, and the next thing you know, the icebox won’t be big enough for your penguins. Besides, you haven’t done a thing about how I’m going to keep the food cold.”

  “I will, my love,” promised Mr. Popper. “It is already pretty cold for the middle of October, and it will soon be cold enough outside for Captain Cook and Greta.”

  “Yes,” said Mrs. Popper, “but if you keep them outside the house, they might run away.”

  “Mamma,” said Mr. Popper, “you put your food back in the icebox tonight, and we will just keep Greta and Captain Cook in the house. Captain Cook can help me move the nest into the other room. Then I will open all the windows and leave them open, and the penguins will be comfortable.”

  “They will be comfortable, all right,” said Mrs. Popper, “but what about us?”

  “We can wear our winter overcoats and hats in the house,” said Mr. Popper, as he got up to go around and open all the windows.

  “It certainly is colder,” said Mrs. Popper, sneezing.

  The next few days were even colder, but the Poppers soon got used to sitting around in their overcoats. Greta and Captain Cook always occupied the chairs nearest the open windows.

  One night, quite early in November, there was a blizzard, and when the Poppers got up in the morning, there were large drifts of snow all over the house.

  Mrs. Popper wanted to get her broom and have Mr. Popper bring his snow shovel to clear away the drifts, but the penguins were having so much fun in the snow that Mr. Popper insisted it should be left where it was.

  In fact, he even went so far as to bring an old garden hose up from the basement and sprinkle all the floors that night until the water was an inch deep. By the next morning all the Popper floors were covered with smooth ice, with snowdrifts around the edges near the open windows.