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Penguin In The Backpack?

A

Anonymous

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others may know if this is a fof tale it has all the halmarks... a friend was talkign to an old lady at the bus stop outside Plymouth Aquarioum and was told this. her grand soen is autistic and was taken to the zoo/aquarium. His mother needed to go to the loo and left the lad outside while she went, with instructions not to move. She came out after a few mins and the lad was shivering with cold and wet from head to foot. not being able to get an explanation she abandons the trip to get the lad home. Latter that night he disapears agin a serch ensues and hes found, in the bath..... with a penguin...hed caught it at the zoo and hidden it in his backpack!
 
a new twist on the p-p-p-pick up a penguin :D

yes im wearing it
 
Penguin in a back pack? I thought this was going to be a story about someone being pregnant. You know; like bun in the oven, etc.
 
I heard this UL years ago from my Dad. He told it as if it had happened to a kid at the school where he was a teacher (he taught at a special school).
There might be a grain of truth in it, but I'm not 100% sure it actually happened to a kid from my Dad's school.
 
Definitely a UL - we had it here in Dublin year before last as well.
 
I first heard this one in the early seventies, where it was supposed to have happened at another school in Lancashire.

IIRC there's a TV play from around the same time or a few years later where this incident occurs (I think inspired by the UL rather than the cause of it) (BTW I'm not thinking of the kid in the penguin costume in 'Gregory's Girl')
 
A passing acquaintance of mine -attempted- to abduct a pengiun from the Welsh Mountain Zoo many years ago. He p-p-p-picked it out of the enclosure and kind of zipped it up his jacket with Mr Penguin inside it. He was stopped, however, about 5 metres later by some very angry looking penguin looker-afterers. Emphasis on the passing acquaintance here PLEASE. The guy was a total idiot.
 
The colonial would like some insight as to what the "p-p-p-icked" reference is, p-p-p-lease. :)

Be honest--who wouldn't love a penguin?!
 
Leaferne said:
The colonial would like some insight as to what the "p-p-p-icked" reference is, p-p-p-lease. :)

Be honest--who wouldn't love a penguin?!
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Penguin is also the name of a popular cocolate biscuit bar (a staple of kid's packed lunches) who's slogan for years was p-p-pick up a penguin. Quite nice they are too. :)
 
they aren't as nice as Aldi seal bars, as well as being about three times the price.

realistically i don't think the kid would have gotten very far without either the fuss the penguin would undoubtedly have made or the fishy stench eminating from the boy's backpack alerting the mother to the bird's presence.
 
Bosbaba said:
Definitely a UL - we had it here in Dublin year before last as well.
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That might be true actully to a point. A friend of my brother's (he was living in derry in NI at the time) took their little girl to the zoo and a baby penguin had been smuggled out under the little girls coat. the parent's discovered this when they got home and was promptly taken back to the zoo.

Now that dose sound like a classic friend of a friend set up but it wasn't as it made it into the local paper with photos, which my brother posted to me when I pointed out that if the other one was pulled a ringing sound would be heard.

this was about 2 or 3 years ago so i presume that as you heard it it might have been a retelling of that insident or based on that insident.
 
fluffle said:
they aren't as nice as Aldi seal bars, as well as being about three times the price.
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Is that a dry joke? I've never heard of them!
 
The Yithian said:
fluffle said:
they aren't as nice as Aldi seal bars, as well as being about three times the price.
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Is that a dry joke? I've never heard of them!
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well you probably wouldn't have, unless you shop in Aldi. they are nice enough to cause near warfare in my household. every time we go to aldi, my flatmates squabble over the stupid biscuits and everyone tries to eat their share of them before anyone else can nick them. a pack of about 30 seems to last about 2 days. and then there are the arguments about what flavour everyone is allowed to eat - if your favourite is the mint flavour and you eat an orange one, it will be considered a serious affront by the person whose favourites are the orange ones. personally i like the orange ones, but as the one with the most limited appetite for junk food, they are all gone by the time i get there.
 
I've never even heard of Aldi... type of car isn't it?
 
definitely an UL.

I've heard this twice in the last 6 months from people in entirely separate circles who each said it had happened to soemone they knew.
 
Wow, didn't realise this was a UL... my dad went to school with my old primary school headmaster, and years ago my dad said they went on a class trip to Edinburgh Zoo back in the day. Headmaster Jnr allegedly stole a penguin (at Edinburgh Zoo they have a daily penguin parade, so theoretically this could be possible...). His crime was only discovered on the bus home, when he let the penguin out of his school bag.
 
How easy/hard would it be to look after a penguin on one's own? *picturing bathtub full of ice*
 
Sardan said:
definitely an UL.

I've heard this twice in the last 6 months from people in entirely separate circles who each said it had happened to soemone they knew.
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Oh, yes, I don't say it's not a UL but it really did happen in the event i discribed in my last post because I was actully shown the article in the paper so eather it did happen or this familly told all their friends a lie, the zoo lied too and the papers swallowed it.

I wanted a penguin as a kid so had i have thought of it or had the nerve I'd have tryed secreting one on my person so maybe it happens for real every so often with varying degrees of sucsess and then others retell the story saying it happened to a mate of theirs to add local interest.
 
Weird. Weird. Yesterday, I had to go to Twycross Zoo for the day for work :D, And on the train home my colleage told me this one...I knew what was coming as soon as she said "my friend is a teacher, and did a school trip to a zoo..." Now, My colleague totally believed it. I pointed out carefully that I'd heard the story before, and what school/zoo was it? She didn't know. :( But she did say the child was famously disruptive, and was unnaturally quiet on the bus on the way home with the bird...


Oh, and I know from experience that, at Harewood House, Yorkshire, the barriers around the penguin pool are low at one point, so you can reach over and tickleand stroke the penguins if they are close; at least this was the case two years ago. I did this, so did my son. There were no staff around, we could have had one in the backpack easy as anything.
 
All sounds very UL-like to me.

I recall an interview with a zookeeper once about how difficult it was to do anything with penguins - their beaks are sharp, and , as he put it 'those things are solid muscle'. I don't believe you keep get one in your coat without ine hell of a struggle - or abduct a small penguin without parental resistance...

"Like most penguins, the species in New Zealand do not like being handled by humans. The closest thing to being beaten up by a penguin is being grabbed with a pair of needle-nosed pliers and beaten with sandals!"

http://www.penguin.net.nz/faq/faq.html


Googling a bit, you find that this is a story that dates back to at least 1978 with similar motifs recurring repeatedly - damp child, duffle bag, penguin found in tub, etc

From Rodney Dale's The Tumour in the Whale (1978):
The young son of a foaf arrived home from a visit to the Zoo, dumped his duffel-bag, and tucked into a plate of bangers and mash. Whilst trying to elicit from him whether or not he had had a good day, and what he had seen, his mother noticed a movement in his duffel-bag which was lying in the corner of the room. On investigation, the bag was found to contain a baby penguin. The lad denied all knowledge of it -- no, he hadn't picked it up when nobody was looking. So his mother telephoned the Zoo, and found that it still had the full complement of penguins . . . [p. 134]

Yes, the story may well have appeared in a local paper, but that does not make it actually true. We would have to track down details etc - what zoo was it? Apparently zoos regularly get inquiries from journalists about this -and some may have decicded the story was better than the truth...

see also - http://msgboard.snopes.com/message/ulti ... 0/p/1.html
 
Oh yes, here we are about that Dublin story that made the papers:

"When contacted, Zoo public relations officer, Ethel Power, nearly fell off her chair laughing and told us we were the first newspaper from the South East to make contact about such a story but, since April last, there had been similar enquiries from newspapers in Ulster, Connaught and Leinster."

http://web.archive.org/web/200302192146 ... inion1.htm
 
There's a Willy Russell TV play from about 1979 called Our Day Out which features a school trip where the kids visit a zoo at one point and steal some of the (smaller) animals, including a penguin I think. They're discovered before the bus sets off again. Could that be the source of this UL? It sounds very similar.
 
GNC said:
There's a Willy Russell TV play from about 1979 called Our Day Out which features a school trip where the kids visit a zoo at one point and steal some of the (smaller) animals, including a penguin I think. They're discovered before the bus sets off again. Could that be the source of this UL? It sounds very similar.
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Thanks GNC, that's the TV play I was trying to remember when I posted earlier about having heard the story in the '70s, however, the story was already well established before that.
 
fluffle said:
realistically i don't think the kid would have gotten very far without either the fuss the penguin would undoubtedly have made or the fishy stench eminating from the boy's backpack alerting the mother to the bird's presence.
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Maybe it was because Mom who was a bit too dense to pick up on any clues... but what kind of mother leaves her autistic son alone in a public place while she uses the bathroom? She must have been asking for something to happen.

I'm just thinking that if I had a penguin in my backpack, I would never be able to hide that from my mother! Not for a second! I would be so excited that I would open my bag right in the car to introduce Mom to my new friend.

Check out this website... this has been up for at least 3-4 years and I don't know what to make of it:
http://penguinwarehouse.com/
 
On Saturday night I was told this story by a very earnest friend who insisted it had just happened to an acquaintance of his who is a primary school teacher! I felt bad telling him it was an urban legend but I did anyway... but he continued to insist it was true.

Apparently in the case the whole class bar the little boy concerned had gone on a ride at the animal park - he had been left on his own because he was too small to go on the ride. I pointed out that this in itself sounds unlikely - what teacher would leave a tiny six year old on his own at a theme park?

Other than this the details were the same... wet kid, backpack, penguin etc.
 
Sardan2 said:
I've heard this twice in the last 6 months from people in entirely separate circles who each said it had happened to soemone they knew.
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I have also just heard this from someone who told me it happened to someone she knew in Dundee though the penguin in question was nicked from Edinburgh. It apparently lived for three days in the kids wardrobe being fed on tuna fish and was found by his mum when she wondered where the smell was coming from. The penguin survived. Though she did hear the story from her dad and not from the penguin pincher himself..

I'm surprised there are any left in zoos at all! ;)
 
It's happened...
A reward is being offered for the return of a Jackass penguin chick stolen from a zoo.

Toga, who has the brown and white colouring of a juvenile, was taken from Amazon World between Newport and Sandown, Isle of Wight.

The zoo offered £1,000, with £2,000 more coming from donations, the Times newspaper reported.

The penguin's mother is said to be pining for him, and the animal is expected to perish soon.

The animal needs its mother as it will not take food from humans.

Born in September, Toga lives on a special diet and needs to be kept cool, with access to plenty of fresh water.

Toga was the first South African Jackass Penguin to be bred at the island zoo. Including his parents, there are now only six adults left.

There are about 150-200 of the rare and endangered breed in the UK.

It is thought the thieves climbed over a six-foot outer wall before clambering over an eight-foot metal and concrete barrier.

Zoo staff believe the popularity of the film March of the Penguins may have inspired the crime.
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Maybe all UL's come true at some point!!! if that's the case I'm going back under the duvet and not coming out :shock:
 
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