Why are penguins so endearing? Well, for starters, they’re small, unintimidating and the way they waddle is adorable. They also present an intriguing blend of bird and fish because their wings have evolved into flippers and they spend a lot of their lives in the water. Cartoonists find them especially cute. If you don’t believe me, just Google “cartoon” and “penguin” and hope your computer doesn’t crash while loading all the hits. There’s even a long Wikipedia page devoted solely to penguin characters: wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fictional_penguins.

 

But all the cuteness, cartoons and charm are of no avail to the Adélie penguins in Antarctica. They now face extinction because rising temperatures are melting their habitat. Regardless of whether you think this is caused by man, God, or normal climate fluctuations, the rapidly diminishing polar ice caps mean that an important part of the Adélie penguins’ home is disappearing. 

 

Some penguin colonies have sought higher ground, but nevertheless, their numbers have diminished significantly in the last decades. The melting, massive Antarctic ice cap doesn’t just displace penguins. It also causes rising sea levels. That means communities at or near sea level, even in other parts of the world, may well be inundated before the end

 of the century. Potential casualties include inhabited islands, like our beloved hometown! To learn more, read Fraser’s Penguins by Fen Montaigne.

 

The Culinary Academy of Post Street was drawn to the penguins’ cuteness, not their impending doom. Leila, Roan and Abby quickly discerned how to create a perky edible penguin just by looking at a sample and then sizing up its ingredients. They then wrote down detailed, sequential directions on the assembly 

process. 

 

It’s not as easy as it sounds. A picture really is worth a thousand words. The final test came when the kids gave willing victims the same ingredients and directions back at home, to see whether the recruits could successfully create the same Antarctic creature.