African penguins

    Today we went to Boulders Beach, where the endangered African penguin calls home. The admission was expensive, but we had enough to pay. We first walked down a path that led to the beach. We saw lots of penguins and their chicks hiding in the shrubbery. I saw one poop, and their poop was green! They were cute but also very smelly. Then, we read some signs that told you some interesting facts about the African penguins. African penguins are on the smaller side of all penguins, and are the only penguins that live in hot weather. They have two pink glands above their eyes which they use to regulate their heat. The glands get darker as they heat up because they are putting warm blood into the glands, and because the glands are open to air, it cools the hot blood down. They do that repeatedly until they are content. They catch fish in the ocean, and have waterproof feathers. When penguins choose their mate, that is the mate they will have for the rest of their life. The mom and dad take turns guarding the nest, in case an intruder tries to eat their chick. The other parent goes fishing for their chick. They eat fish that they catch, and then swim home to throw up the food into their chick’s mouth. If they look at you with each eye, they are warning you that you are nearing their nest boundaries. Baby penguins cannot swim, because their feathers are not waterproof yet. They shed their feathers when they turn into grownups. The shedding takes about thirty days, and so they have to eat a lot the days before, because when they start molting, their parents stop fishing for them. At the end of the thirty days, all their baby feathers are gone, and they now have waterproof feathers. We next went down to the beach to see all the penguins. There were so many penguins, and Daddy took lots of pictures. After that, we walked up the path again and saw a gift shop. It had lots of cool things like penguin bags, and penguin keychains, and also a bunch of different penguin stuffed animals of all different sizes. There were little ones, the size of my hand, and giant ones, almost as tall as Acadian is now. I looked at the price for a medium sized one, but it was twenty four dollars! We went to the car without buying anything. As we were walking back, we saw a sign that said: check under your car for penguins! There were no penguins underneath our car.