Our love is snow joke: My brief love affair with a penguin

 As part of a penguin's courtship ritual, a male may present his lady-love with a token:  A small pebble. According to our Penguin Encounter ambassador, countless of these exchanges have taken place in their exhibit over the years.  

Oh, puh-leeze. 

Attempting to anthropomorphize their penguins is a cheap trick designed to get me to shell out some serious coinage to book a reservation with a waddle.

Fun fact:  A group of penguins on water is a raft; on land is a waddle.

This was NOT my and Sydney's first black and white rodeo. We met our first penguin pal, Opus, around five years ago. With that magical meeting in mind, Sydney learned of another Arctic opportunity except, instead of just meeting ONE penguin...we would commune with a colony!

We got off to a shaky and uncertain start...wrestling our sweaty feet into suction-inducing muck boots ("Good luck getting these off later," I muttered to Sydney.) and donning insulated coats to brave the frigid temperatures of the fake glacier of which we would be transversing. The rapid temperature change from San Diego spicy chili to Antarctic sterile chilly was dizzying. My eyeglasses, first steamed from the oppressive humidity, were now fogged over from the cold. My perspiring palms were now in danger of frost bite. My nipples didn't know which way was up.

Our exploration team was a small group of six. They did not dress on-theme as Sydney and I did. They were calm, quiet, and professional where as Syd and I were all a-twitter, quite boisterous, and fan-girling hard before we'd even passed through our first Authorized Personnel Only door. 

Our first stop was the kitchen where I broke the first of many of the thousands of rules necessary for the safety of the penguins. It turns out that when I'm about to trek across a fake glacier to commune with penguins, I am no longer able to comprehend, let alone, carry out, instructions. Every boundary I was given, I apparently blew right through. Past the refrigerator was an out-of-boundary zone...but I had seen a little side-room with several head-phoned staff members over-looking a wall of computer monitors. One saw me and immediately got up to close the door...very Hunger Games...very Oz behind-the-curtain. "Ma'am, please step back into the kitchen," our ambassador directed, distracting me with the arrival of a middle-aged Macaroni penguin with soft, iridescent feathers, a Trump-ian hairstyle and a propensity for projectile pooping. Magical.

We were then given a thousand more rules. I'd already been hollered at twice so I tried extra hard to pay attention. The main thrust seemed to be, with no exceptions...under no circumstances...no matter what...do NOT touch the penguins. 

"Do NOT touch the penguins. Do NOT touch the penguins. Do NOT touch the penguins," I repeated to myself as we approached another Authorized Personnel Only door. We stepped though the wardrobe door...were aromatically punched in the face by penguin poo...and my only thought was "I MUST touch ALL the penguins." Wise to my rule-breaking ways, the staff kept a close eye on me. I imagine my image was featured predominantly on the wall of computer monitors back in Big Brother-land. Sydney, trying to ensure we didn't get kicked out, stuck close to my side.

We loved it.

There were a plethora of penguins. 

Six different species of penguins co-exist in this three hundred member cacophonous colony...including the Emperor penguin. San Diego has the only zoo in the Western Hemisphere to house Emperor penguins and I was watching my daughter dance with one. There was even an Emperor penguin chick...if you could call it that. The thing was a monster. It was a fuzzy black version of the Looney Tunes red heart-shaped monster named Gossamer. We had been warned and managed to evade Vlad the Impaler as he stomped angrily by. He was still adorable but we didn't think he'd take that for the compliment we intended. 

And then it happened.

Just like in the story books. The movies.

Their eyes met across the crowded glacier...

They waddled rapidly towards each other across the field of flowers...

I had kept my hands tucked deeply in the recesses of my jacket to help me repress the overwhelming need to touch ALL the penguins. I watched my little guy approach...a resolute little waddle that would NOT be re-routed by the penguins ping-pong balling all over the ice. He planted himself at my feet. Confused, I inched to the side, worried that I was blocking his way to his intended destination...never imagining that I was his intended destination. He moved with me. 

Time stopped.

The music swelled.

He reached out gently with his slender beak to give my trousers a tug. My heart melted but I kept my hands firmly in my pocket. I was NOT that kind of a girl.

Oh please...I am EXACTLY that kind of girl.

He would not be deterred. 

Bold...he wiggled between my feet and settled in. My hands, imprisoned, because of the strict directives sanctioning our freedoms, flexed...itching to reach out. He gazed adoringly up at me. I bent at the waist...physically and emotionally pained over not being able to touch him. Sydney asked a nearby staff member about our little guy. She gave his name in numbers which horrified us. She quickly adjusted by telling us that his name is Ralphie.

Ralphie.

Oh, Ralphie.

My little Chin-Strap soul-mate.

I hovered, paralyzed, as our auras entwined atmospherically...transcending time, physical space, and species.

"Oh, for goodness sake. Go ahead and touch him," the glacier gate-keeper groaned.

How I managed not to scoop that little guy up and seriously snuggle him...I do not know. With a restraint I did not know I possessed (You would know that if you'd ever seen me with a can of Pringles or a bag of "shareable" M&Ms), I gently stroked Ralphie's glimmering back with one finger. He immediately pinned my wrist between his tilted head and body. I was enraptured.

Too soon...it was time to go.

Hot-on-my-heels, Ralphie followed my reluctant stride to the door before he was heartlessly scooped up to be placed in Time Out. Turns out, Ralphie was a frequent rule-breaker too. With one last backwards look over my shoulder, I stepped across the threshold, back to the real world. My real, Ralphie-free, penguin-less, world. I was devastated. 

"It would have never worked out," Sydney said, sympathetically, as she braced herself, one leg against the wall as she defied gravity, her body horizontal as she attempted to leverage the muck boot off my leg. Tears streamed down my face. "Why?" I sobbed, inconsolable. Sydney steered me toward the margarita stand. I couldn't see because my glasses were steamed up. "Mom, you were polar opposites."