Baby Penguin

Hello everyone! I’m a baby emperor penguin. I live way down south, way down where it is freezing cold most of the year. I live in the Antarctic. Most people don’t know very much about penguins and they may think that we have an easy life. However, easy is not in our vocabulary.

I hatched, under a thick fold of skin, in the depths of freezing cold weather and I’m not just talking just below zero either. I’m talking about temperatures in the range of -40 degrees to -50 degrees. I was hatched by my father, not my mother. While I am still in the egg, my mother rolls me out in the freezing cold temperatures and my father rolls me underneath him. My father takes care of me for the first few weeks of my life, after I hatch, while my mother is out getting food in the cold Antarctic Ocean. My father and I don’t get to eat until my mother comes back.

While we wait for my mother to come back, my father stands in a huge circle with other emperor penguins and huddles to try to keep warm. The cold Antarctic air rips through his feathers and sometimes I can feel him shiver. I sometimes can hear his empty stomach rumbling because he is so hungry and yet he continues on to take care of me. My father has devotion like no other and I have nothing but true respect for him.

It is a joyous occasion when my mother finally does show up. My father is very happy to see her because he now knows that he finally gets to go to the ocean himself to eat. I am also very happy to see my mother because I know that I finally get to eat my first bites of food.

At this time my father goes to feed and then he’ll come back while my mother takes care of me and then she’ll go and eat and then come back. The ocean is far away from where we are and it is a long walk to get there, too long for little old me but not for my mother or father.

I am completely dependent on my mother and my father for food. Without them, I would die. I always worry about them walking to the ocean and back because if they don’t make it back I starve to death.

So, as you can see, my life here is certainly not easy but I still wouldn’t trade it for the world.