PETER PENGUIN

Hawera Star, Volume LIV, 20 April 1935, Page 10

PETER PENGUIN

HOW HE LEARNED TO SWIM

Peter Penguin was so sad! He cried such a lot that a lobster came up out of the sea, loolsing very cross indeed. “Do stop crying, Peter Penguin!?’ he said. “You haven’t stopped now for

14 days, and you are making the sea so salty iyith your tears that it is giving us all indigestion down there!” “I —I can’t help it!” sobbed Peter. “All the seagulls laugh at me!” “Yes, we do. Ha! ha!”.sang a seagull flying .by with that horrid laugh of his. “You’re such a funny thing! Why, you can’t swim .and you can’t fly. You can only waddle!” “Well, 'why don’t you learn to fly, Peter?” said the lobster. “If I were you I’d go to the top of the cliffs and take a jump—and, well, you won’t be able to help flying, will you?” “What a perfectly beautiful idea!” cried Peter, and then the lobster hurried back into the sea to get on with his breakfast.

So Peter waddled up to the top of the cliffs.

Then ho waddled Tight to the very, very edge, and took a long breath. He knew if he stopped to think about it he would never do it, so he blinked forty times, said his A B C backwards, and then frontwards, and then he said: 1 ‘ One—two —three —fly! ”

Then he jumped off the top of that high cliff, but he didn’t fly! Oh, no! Although he flapped his wings as hard as he eould, he felt himself going down, down, down—and then suddenly plomp! He had dived Tight into the sea! Down he went below the waves, and there he saw his friend the lobster still having breakfast. “What, you hero?” cried the lobster. “I didn’t know you could- swim!”

"Neither did I!” chuckled Peter. It was lovely and he enjoyed it. "Goodbye!” he sang, and went up to the surface, swimming about like a fish! "Nobody can ever laugh at me now!” he thought gleefully. "I can swim beautifully, and I learnt how to swim by trying to fly!” Wasn’t that funny? And he was the very first penguin that ever learnt to swim, you know, but they can all do it now! So the seagulls can never laugh at the penguins these days!