And Penguin Was His Name-O

Apologies for the earworm. Penguin has too many letters and doesn’t even end in an o, so you should have no trouble shaking the song from your brain. Good luck.

One time Beau and I were riding our bikes home, through one of neighborhoods in Foster City between the Seal Slough and the Belmont bike bridge. We were passing a housing complex that has a “water feature” — I just know it’s called that — a kind of fake canal-ish construction.

That “water feature” is always chock full of bird commoners, primarily Canada geese and mallards. So I paid little attention as I whizzed by on my red bike, which is called The Thief Magnet because it features not only a shiny red frame but also red tires. It’s heavy and old and usually dirty. Nice bike, one person said once.

And then! Out of the corner of my eye I saw a peculiar bird. I didn’t screech to a halt to look because, well, I can’t really imagine why. Some kind of lethargic momentum, maybe. Or my brain was overwhelmed by trying to make sense of the impossible bird I saw, and I forgot about the possibility of stopping for a closer look. But after I turned the corner onto a quieter street I pulled my bike over to the side of the road and dismounted to wait for Beau, who was a few hundred yards behind me.

Did you see that bird? I asked him, struggling mightily to contain my excitement. He said, Yes, I did. What did it look like to you? I asked pretty calmly, before revealing my definitively insane hypothesis. A penguin, he said.

That’s what I thought! A penguin! exclaimed I, far more loudly than strictly necessary. Then again, how loudly ought someone shout, PENGUIN! under these circumstances?

But how could a penguin be in a “water feature” in Foster City?

When I got home I texted my son, Max, and his girlfriend, Ems. They know these things. Especially Ems, who’s an outdoors aficionado, spending her childhood summers in Maine paddling on lakes, camping, hiking through the forest, collecting chaga and selling it to health food stores for pocket money.

I saw a penguin, I texted.

Mom, you’re full of s***, texted Max with an implied smiley emoji. He used a synonym for poopsteroni, the word I taught him while I was changing his diaper, twenty-some years ago. Sometimes a one-syllable word is more powerful than a four-syllable word, and funnier in the right context. His powerful response was infused with love. I knew he knew I wasn’t that gullible.

He added, No way could a penguin be in a fake residential canal in Foster City. And that’s pretty dang true, I had to and did freely admit.

Ems replied, Maybe it was a puffin. She is the loveliest, kindest, gentlest soul. Even while wicked smart and creative.

I knew it wasn’t a puffin. Didn’t have a puffin beak at all. Those are orange, for heaven’s sake. Before I’d texted them I’d pored through results from duckduckgo searches for SF Bay water birds. I’d also skimmed through the water bird section of the North American Field Guide to Birds that had sat neglected for years on our bookshelf at the top of the stairs. Nothing looked like this except a penguin.

A few more texts went back and forth. Beau and I talked about the alleged penguin a bit more. I’d seen it out of the corner of my eye, for just a fraction of a second. Same for him. Why hadn’t we stopped immediately?

Ems said, Maybe it really was a penguin, escaped from the San Francisco Zoo. She was being kind. The zoo was twelve miles away as the crow flies, but the penguin would have had to waddle across the zoo, out the gate without the guard noticing, successfully dodge cars as it crossed Route 1, pay the state park fee at the Ocean Beach parking lot, cross Ocean Beach to the Pacific, swim a few miles north, head east under the Golden Gate Bridge, paddle ten miles south down the SF Bay, hop over the dam to the Seal Slough, swim three more miles down the Seal Slough, and then hoof it a couple of blocks from the nearest point of the Seal Slough to the “water feature.” It might be plausible if penguins could fly, but as we learned in second grade, they cannot.

I chalked it up to mystery. Would like to say I forgot about it, but truth be told, I related the story of the Foster City penguin to quite a few of my friends. Some laughed. Some looked away, embarrassed for me, and I haven’t heard from them much since.

Then, a breakthrough in the case! A few weeks later I saw the bird again. I was biking along the Seal Slough heading towards the bay. This time I stopped my bike and got a good, long look. He was sitting in the ice plant, right next to the slough, about twenty feet from me. I took a mind-photo, and also described the bird aloud to myself, a memory appliance that seems to help.

When I got home, I went through the bird book again, and I found him. He’s a night heron. A black-crowned night heron. Not common in the SF Bay Area, but not unheard-of either. I texted an image to Max and Ems. Max had lost interest, but Ems, in her gracious way, agreed that the night heron looks quite a bit like a penguin.

No one knows what Ems really thinks.

I’ve seen him two more times since then, always on the Seal Slough. I’ve named him Penguin, even though I know he’s a night heron. Penguin is his name. Oh.

Epilogue: Beau and I went to the SF Zoo a few months later. Covid was still having its way with us, and the zoo was delightfully empty that day, a school day. Felt as if all the animals were there just for us. We wandered leisurely through the exhibits.

There in the penguin enclosure was Penguin. So it’s not just me—he himself thinks he’s a penguin. He was acting all nonchalant and trying to blend in with the others.

This time I got a photo.

[Photo creds: Me. Me, with a sense of triumph and vindication.]