The following is a short story from Rat World Issue Three .
Kelly Tarlton’s 2002
My mum has a cute story that she likes to tell of the first time she took me to Kelly Tarlton’s Sea Life Aquarium to visit the king penguins. “Ooh, look at the penguin!” She had said, pointing at a man in a penguin costume. I had frozen in place, no longer excited. “Mum, is that really a penguin?” I had asked. She quickly realised that I at age 3 had never personally met a penguin before and must have been terrified thinking that the birds from my books were the size of an adult human man. “No honey, don’t worry, it’s just a man in a suit”, she said. Immediately I was excited again, “Haha! Look at the penguin!”, I yelled as we went inside.
It wasn’t until I heard this story as an adult that I was finally able to add the context that I’d been completely unable to communicate as a child. I had been thinking about penguins for the entire long drive out to Kelly Tarlton’s’. I was so fucking ready to see them, feed them, ride one? Maybe they’d let me adopt one if I behaved really well. The freezer at home could make ice. It would take a lot of work, but I could definitely construct an enclosure with enough cardboard and time. We crossed the carpark.
“Ooh, look at the penguin!” said my mum, innocently. I followed her pointing finger and froze. Jesus fucking Christ. My first experience with the uncanny valley. That was definitely a penguin, there was no denying it. But it was so wrong, an unmoving mouth, unblinking plastic eyes – and the beast was SIX-fucking-FEET-TALL. But it wasn’t the size of the penguin in of itself that terrified me, it was the drastic implications. I knew for a fact that a Leopard Seal or a Polar Bear could swallow a penguin whole. My mind spiralled into a neurodivergent panic as I rapidly recalculated the size of every Arctic and Antarctic species. Suddenly I had to be far more afraid of these creatures than I thought I had to be, and my brain was trying to make up for all of that lost time by flooding me with adrenaline.
It just being a man in a penguin suit meant that Polar Bears weren’t house-sized. Thank fuck.