There once was a penguin who lived in Antarctica and loved nothing more than swimming and eating fish. One day, as he was sitting in his house, he began to feel hungry and thought he would go for a swim and see what he could find to eat. He hadn’t gone far when he found a delicious-looking fish. He started to swim up to it, mouth watering, when the fish spoke to him.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m looking for a fish for my dinner,” the penguin replied, confused at the fish’s question.
“That’s silly,” the fish responded. “Penguins don’t like fish; they hate fish. What they really like is celery. You’d better go find some celery.”
The penguin was even more confused now. He thought he liked fish; he thought it was his favorite food; but the fish said penguins liked celery, so he had better go find some. He was getting pretty hungry.
He swam back to shore and headed straight for the supermarket. He selected a nice, crisp, green bunch of celery, paid for it, and took it home.
Once home, he sat down at his table and took a big bite. It didn’t taste very good. He made a face and swallowed it. Maybe it needed cooked? He got out his frying pan and fried a stalk. It still didn’t taste good. He tried baking it, freezing it, pureeing it, stuffing it, and boiling it, but it still wasn’t at all appetizing. The fish must have been mistaken, he thought. Celery could not be something penguins liked to eat. He decided to return to his original fishing plan.
It didn’t take him long to find the fish again. The penguin, who was now very hungry, swam quickly towards to him, eager to take a big bite.
“What are you doing?”
The penguin thought that this should be obvious, but answered anyway. “I’m fishing for my dinner. I tried some celery; I didn’t like it. I want fish.”
“No, you don’t,” the fish again answered. “I already told you; penguins hate fish. What you want is a big bunch of carrots.”
The poor penguin was more confused than ever. Carrots? Oh well, he had better hurry to get some. He really wanted to eat dinner.
Once more at the store, he bought a big bunch of carrots and took it home for dinner. He took a big bite out of the first one, and nearly spit it out. Penguins liked this? If he was a penguin, why didn’t he? It didn’t make sense. He tried cooking them all the ways he had tried cooking the celery, but had no better luck. Maybe he had better go back to eating fish. He thought he remembered liking fish.
Once more, he approached the fish, hungrier than he had ever been before. And again the fish asked,
“What are you doing?”
“I’m really, really hungry and I need something to eat and I don’t like celery or carrots so I think penguins must not like those and you were mistaken and I really think I need to eat fish!”
“No, no, no,” the fish answered. “You’ve got it all wrong. Of course penguins don’t like those things. But the thing they hate the most is fish. Penguins’ favorite food is popcorn. You had better go find some popcorn.”
Desperate now, the penguin set off to the store to buy some popcorn. Unfortunately, when he got there, he couldn’t find any. He tried another store. It didn’t sell popcorn, either. He tried a third store. No popcorn. Finally, he decided to swim until he could find some.
He jumped off his iceberg and started swimming. And swimming. And swimming. And swimming some more. He swam for days. He got very, very hungry. He kept swimming. When he got tired of that, he… kept swimming. Finally, he reached the shore. He crawled up on the beach, exhausted. And hungry.
He looked up, hoping to see something to eat. Standing directly in front of him was a boy with a bag of popcorn in his hand. The boy, amazed at the sight of a penguin on the beach in California, took a piece of popcorn and tossed it to the penguin. The penguin ate it in one gulp. The boy tossed another. Another gulp, and it was gone. And it tasted delicious! The penguin had never tasted anything like it!
The boy kept tossing the popcorn, piece by piece, and the penguin kept eating it. When the time came for the boy to go, he dropped a trail of popcorn and the penguin followed him home, eating all the way. From that point on, the penguin lived in the boy’s house, feasting on popcorn every day, enjoying the attention of every child in the neighborhood, and often thinking how lucky it was that the fish in Antarctica had known about penguins’ favorite food!
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