Mr. Popper's Penguins by Atwater

Author:Atwater
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Toward afternoon the weather got warmer and the ice began to melt. “Now, Papa,” said Mrs. Popper, “you really must do something. We can’t go on like this.“

“But Captain Cook and Greta are both fat and sleek, and the children have never been so rosy.”

“It may be very healthy,” said Mrs. Popper, as she mopped up the flood, “but it’s very untidy.”

“I will do something about it tomorrow,” said Mr.

Popper.

Chapter XII

More Mouths to Feed

O THE NEXT DAY Mr. Popper called an engineer and had a large freezing plant installed in the cellar, and took Captain Cook and Greta down there to live. Then he had the furnace taken out and moved upstairs into the living room. It looked very odd there, but, as Mrs. Popper said, it was a relief at least not to have to wear their overcoats all the time.

Mr. Popper was quite worried when he found that all these changes were going to be very expensive. The refrigerating engineer was worried, too, when he found that Mr. Popper had practically no money. However, Mr. Popper promised to pay as soon as he could, and the man let him have everything on credit.

It was a good thing that Mr. Popper got the penguins moved when he did, because Mrs. Popper had been right about the eggs. The rookery had scarcely been moved to the basement when Greta laid the first egg. Three days later the second one appeared.

Since Mr. Popper knew that penguins lay only two eggs a season, he was astonished when, a little later, the third egg was found under Greta. Whether the change in climate had changed the penguins’ breeding habits, Mr. Popper never knew, but every third day a new one would appear until there were ten in all.

Now penguin eggs are so large that the mother can sit on only two at a time, and this created quite a problem. Mr. Popper solved it, however, by distributing the extra eggs under hot-water bottles and electric heating-pads, kept just at penguin-body heat.

The penguin chicks, when they began to hatch, were not so handsomely marked as their mother and father. They were fuzzy, droll little creatures who grew at a tremendous rate. Captain Cook and Greta were kept very busy bringing food to them, though, of course the Poppers all helped, too.

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