The Penguin Lessons

by Tom Michell

For her, the joy of the things she could do outweighed the woes of those she couldn’t.

‘I only want things that make me happy. So many people are captivated by things that can never make them happy!’ ‘What makes you happy, then, Maria?’ ‘Oh, my children and my family make me happy, and my friends. Growing things makes me happy. Flowers on the tomatoes and the swelling fruit. The hens, the pigs and the goats make me happy. My work makes me happy, too.’ She paused and then said, ‘Growing older with the people I love makes me happy.’

My glory is living freely as the birds of the air; I make no earthly nest where there is much suffering, And nobody can follow when I again take flight. I have no lover to vex me with quarrels; Like the beautiful birds that hop between branches, I make my bed of clover and stars are my covers.

the pain of parting is the toll demanded by Fate for all the joy brought to us by loved ones

Though it is not always the case, I believe, That the longer we’ve kept ’em the more do we grieve; For when debts are payable, right or wrong, A short-time loan is as bad as a long – So why in Heaven (before we are there) Should we give our hearts to a dog to tear?

There will come a time, I expect, when humans have learned enough about animal behaviour to realize that animals can communicate with us and each other to a far greater extent than we currently give them credit for and at that point this narrative will perhaps appear less fanciful. One day, I believe, we will be able to confirm that many animals have the capacity to understand and process information and experience emotions to a far more sophisticated degree than opinion currently holds.

Since Rachel Carson published the seminal Silent Spring in 1962 the total number of humans has more than doubled. Simultaneously, an enormous number of species the world over, including penguins, have suffered population declines of eighty or ninety per cent and are now considered ‘endangered’, while others have become extinct. The hypothesis for the collapse of the human society of Easter Island by their degradation of the environment has been postulated as a model for the Malthusian global collapse of our entire species.