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Although the examples of this penguin-napping legend quoted above would appear to place the location of the incident at Drayton Manor, an amusement park in the United Kingdom, and as having taken place in 2005, we found the very same tale in a 1993 collection of urban legends: In the 1993 version of the legend, the penguin's abductor is identified as an overactive child; in the 2005 tellings he is said to be a 12-year-old boy with Down Syndrome or a 25-year-old mentally-challenged adult with the mind of a 12-year-old. In each case, the child (or childlike person) makes off with a penguin rather than some other type of animal. The legend always features a penguin because it's one of the few land animals to be found in a zoo or wildlife park that is seemingly both unafraid of humans and unlikely to cause harm to anyone attempting to scoop it up. It is perceived as woefully lacking in natural defenses, making it a perfect fit for this yarn about an intrepid child who carries one off as a prize (since this story wouldn't be quite as charming if the prize gave its pint-size captor a good bite or a few slashings with sharp claws). Also, for the fiction to maintain even a whiff of plausibility, the animal being absconded must be of a size that a child could pick up and conceal. Last, we find the penguin droll thanks to its odd gait and tuxedo'd appearance, so this flightless bird seems a natural fit for a humorous tale that calls for a small non-aggressive animal. (Actually, most types of penguins are generally considerably larger than people picture them, and they're capable of delivering some nasty bites when threatened.) The popularity of the 2005 film March of the Penguins prompted a resurgence of this legend to the extent that in December 2005, officials at the New England Aquarium in Boston invited reporters to observe a penguin head count at that facility to put to rest once and for all the rumor that one of its penguins had been made off with in a fashion described by the urban legend. Likewise, in October 2006 rumors swept through St. Louis that a child had snatched a penguin from the Penguin and Puffin Coast section of that city's zoo, stuffed it into a backpack, and taken it home as a playmate. Also in December 2005, news accounts reported a baby penguin had been stolen from a zoo on the Isle of Wight in Britain when Toga, a three-month old jackass penguin, went missing from Amazon World Zoo Park on 17 December. (There was apparently no evidence that a theft had occurred other than the bird's absence, however, so his disappearance might have been due to an alternative occurrence such as escape, predation, or natural death.) Toga was never found, and the young bird was deemed unlikely to survive more than five days away from his family because he was still at a stage of his development where he needed to be fed by his parents. Penguins star in another urban legend which also uses the birds' comical demeanor to fuel its appeal, one about their falling over onto their backs while trying to observe airplanes flying overhead. According to that tale, pilots in the Falkland Islands would deliberately fly low over groups of penguins, leaving waves of bemused animals flopping over in their wake. Sightings: The 2002 children's book, Tina and the Penguin, by Heather Dyer, tells the story of a little girl who meets a penguin that is tired of living at the zoo and sneaks him into her home.
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