Watermelon Snow

"Outstanding debut routine today, gentlemen. The kiddies cheered the three beak support column with spouting centerpiece action. I told you so." Skipper planted himself in front of their 52-inch television set. "I also told you we could expect top-notch treatment like this ginormous screen. I mean, were they afraid we'd get bored? Is it socialistic preventive therapy propaganda? Count me uncaring and unindoctrinated." He clicked the remote. Lilting, waterfall-sounding music entered the secluded part of the habitat that doubled the size of the one in the Central Park Zoo,except for that one's fourteen hidden levels. Skipper clicked again, and a documentary about ice worms attracted his interest. 

Private rubbed his behind. "Have a care with those beaks next time, everyone."

"Intel from Imelda the polar bear says that this habitat housed two pair arctic foxes before us." Kowalski was winding up to something because he lacked a lab to take up excess mental energy. The others had been through it all with him before. Rico growled under his breath. 

Private sniffed each corner of the wide bunk he was to share with Skipper and gave a sunny smile. "Crackerjack job done on the cleanin' up, then." 

Kowalski continued, bursting to get information out. "Each pair raised a litter all in one bunk. Then the young ones grew up."

Skipper stared at Private bustling about, fluffing pillows, plopping their duffels on something that looked like a massage table four feet from the two bunks. "Yes. They do that."

"So I speculate that our zoo overlords hazarded that since some species of penguins live in burrows, they could take us away from our beautiful HQ with its beautiful lab and shove us into communal living." Kowalski sneaked his options clipboard underneath the pillow of the spot nearest the latrine, then appeared to reconsider.

Rico grinned and Private hid a smile behind his left flipper. Kowalski looked embarrassed at his own sneer and wiped it off his face. "Um, even more communal than we do already." 

Skipper shrugged. "Meh. Bigger bunks. I could get used to this."

"Oh, don't be so Magellanic, Skipper. Thank Galileo it's only temporary." Kowalsi finished stowing his gear after slamming his options clipboard underneath the pillow of the spot farthest away from the latrine. "Let's go see what the humans are doing." He charged up the ramp leading to the surface from their large burrow. There wasn't any sort of cover to use as a door, but the zoo architects had curved the tunnel's entrance away from the prevailing cold wind from the nearby Gulf of Bothnia. It would have to do.

Skipper allowed this. "Very well." He stretched, rising from the concrete floor with his usual fluid grace. One thing this place didn't have was anything like seats.

Kowalski would have swallowed his teeth if he'd had any. "If it's all right with you," he blurted from the top of the ramp. "I lost my temper, I ---"

"Forget it. We needed a change. Let's roll." The slap of little penguin feet faded away.

The television blathered on unwatched, nattering about a mysterious unmarked lorry charging through the Öresund bridge-tunnel tollbooth between Sweden and her southern neighbor without paying fare or disclosing her cargo. The lorry reached the Swedish border all the way from Denmark and it thundered unstoppable into the night, heading northeast. Border officials promised action, possibly as soon as the vernal equinox. 

IOIOIOIOIO

TBC