Not To Disturb Puns

My friend had a really interesting job. One of those jobs you didn't know people could get.

tl;dr just read it, it's worth reading the whole description of the job

Before I moved, my neighbor's job was based in Antarctica. He worked with one of the research centers there, and his job was standing up penguins. I kid you not — when shipments arrived by air, like by helicopter or by airplane or whatever, the penguins would all look up with their tiny heads and look up so high they would fall over backwards. Now, penguins are super awkward in how they waddle everywhere, and so, not wanting to disturb the local environment, the research station had to have someone that could suit up and go out there and stand up penguins.

As soon as every shipment arrived, he would say, "Welp, better go suit up now," get into the whole penguin suit, and waddle out there all incognito and stand the penguins on their feet again. I'm sure they could have done it on their own, eventually, but the idea was to disturb the animals for as little time as possible.

I thought it was the most ridiculous thing when he told me, but he got the job through his dad's researcher colleague. Basically, the deal was they would get people to go down for 3-month periods (I think he ended up doing 6 months) and this was his occupation for that time. Actually, is plane flight there was one of the really cool parts: LA went to Sydney, which then went back across the Pacific to Buenos Aires. Then, on the final leg, he would finally go Buenos Aires to the research station. The planes actually had to be specially fitted for the job, though — Of course, you can't have typical runways in Antarctica because they'd get ice all over them and there'd be all these problems — so the planes had to have mechanics on board each flight who would, mid-flight, switch out the take-off wheels for the landing skis. Just like a sea plane, except it was a snow-plane. Coolest thing ever.

Oh, but the way he described working with the penguins was the best! Most of the time he'd just go out and stand them up, but sometimes one would hurt itself. Like one time one of them fell over backwards and hit its foot the wrong way, so he had to not only pick it up, but give medical help, too. He seriously had to prop up the penguin, take off his glove, and pull on each of the penguins little webbed toes, pull on their legs. Sort of like how I'm pulling your leg right now.

Im helping clean out an old garage that's been filled with random storage for a couple decades. For the last 10ish years it's had a mouse problem.

A couple weeks ago I set out traps and none of us have had time to be there since. Came back today and three of the four had caught mice. Pretty happy with that.

I chucked out the carcasses and when I went to reset the traps I got a bit of a surprise and my comment drew my friend over.

"What's up?" he asks.

"Look at this," I reply, showing him the traps. "After the first three mice got caught another one came along, opened the lid, and ate the rest of the peanut butter. And then look at this! He stuck his nose into the fourth and are just enough of it not to trigger the trap!" Holding up the trap and showing the teeth marks in the peanut butter.

"That's...disturbing," he replies, "why'd you bait it with peanut butter though? Wouldn't fruit be better?"

"Well, I looked it up online, * and three out of four mice say it's to die for."

———

Until the * I genuinely intended to say why. But it was too good to pass up.

Also, anyone have a cat I can borrow?