Check your children's backpacks!

I hate to steal other people's material, but when the other person in question doesn't read my blog, and most likely doesn't have a blog, I feel OK about it. Also, it involves Antarctic wildlife, and that makes the following somewhat of a public service announcement.

I was at a party the other night when a woman I know shared this ditty about a friend who brought her 5-year-old grandson from Indiana to the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago.

At some point during their visit, she looked down and realized her grandson was missing. She searched around on her own, but couldn't find him, so she contacted security, and they began to search every nook and cranny of the aquarium.

I should interrupt this story and tell you two things:
1. This is not a story about a missing child.
2. I do not mean to promote missing children. I'm strictly against kidnapping, wandering off and any other childhood absenteeism.

After two hours of fruitless searching, they were frantic, so the aquarium locked down the building to do a total sweep of the entire facility and all of the patrons. As this was going on, the woman heard, "Hi, grandma!" She looked down and saw her grandson was standing next to her, clutching his backpack to his chest. (Note the foreshadowing.)

In her anger and embarrassment, the woman shouted, "I found him!" and got out of there as fast as she could, without determining where he'd been hiding for several hours.

In the car, the boy wouldn't reveal his whereabouts, keeping his backpack close to him. When they got back home, she angrily threw the backpack on the floor - and it moved! There was something alive in there. She opened it up and found a BABY PENGUIN.

Turns out this kid had managed to access a restricted area behind locked doors where there was an incubator warming newly born penguins. He apparently took a liking to one and stuck it in his backpack.

By the way, I'm not into penguin or backpack abuse. Don't sic PETA on me. (If you do, please warn me so I can take off my penguin-skin backpack first.)

Anyway, I thought that was a crazy story. And, no worries, the penguin was returned.

Then, the same woman who told me this story told me another story about a 13-year-old who jumped into a tank at the aquarium, wrestled a grown penguin and put it in his backpack - all without anyone doing anything.

So I'm, like, "Are you, like, the penguin-backpack-story-lady?"

But I swear she's a real credible lady. She shops at Talbots.