Homework: Penguin Persistence

            Somewhere in the cold Antarctic Ocean, over pure white ice caps that extend far and wide, a young penguin waddles side to side, walking away from its rookery. It walks closer to the ocean, becoming more and more susceptible to the orcas that can easily take it away and devour it. The penguin continues to waddle with its two short legs and small webbed feet into the open unknown with nothing but two flippers to defend itself. Slowly it walks, closer and closer to the ocean.

            The penguin continues to walk. Farther from the rookery it goes. An observer may start to question why. Penguins are social animals that live in large colonies, and these colonies take care of each other. Yet, this penguin chooses to leave the group it has come to know and risk his life questing on its own.

            The penguin’s journey continues. What seems like an eternity has passed and the penguin has yet to show its purpose for traversing such great distances. The rookery is no longer in sight. Finally, it stops waddling. In front of him is the edge of the ice cap and the infinitely extending ocean. The penguin looks around, searching for any of its predators. However, instead of diving into the ocean as an observer would expect, the penguin bends down, picks up a small, shiny and perfectly round pebble. The pebble seemed as if it had no flaws just like a perfectly cut diamond. It had ice crystals around it, which made it seem to be embraced in the glow of the sunlight. The penguin bends down and holds the pebble with its slim beak. It wobbles around to face its back and waddles forward.

The penguin makes his way back to the rookery with the pebble in its beak. It travels the exact icy path back to its home. Finally, penguins of its kind become visible from its viewpoint. The rookery was close by. The penguin stops waddling and puts the pebble down on the icy ground. It starts running through its feathers with its beak like a comb through hair. It picks up the pebble from the ground once again and starts waddling back to the rookery.

          The penguin finally reaches his colony. He waddles passed penguins of different sizes. He stops in front of one of them and puts down the pebble it so difficultly obtained on the ground in front of the other penguin. It was as if it was offering its diamond of a pebble to the other of its kind. As the pebble lies on the ground, the other penguin simply waddles away as if rejecting the offering.

            The penguin picked up the pebble it travelled so far to acquire and waddles away from the rookery once again just how a rejected suitor walks away from the object of his affection. The penguin travels again and repeats the same efforts in obtaining a pebble equally as beautiful as the first. Again, it travels back to the rookery, looking for another mate to offer its pebble to.

            Whether the penguin be rejected again or not, it still exerts the same effort in offering to a potential mate every time. The number of times it gets turned down does not affect its determination to try again, because a penguin’s reason for living is to mate for life.