South Africa Tries Appeasement

In an effort to appease the master plotters of the animal uprising, the penguins, South Africa is trying to bribe them by building the world's first penguin condo development. What's next? A mall?

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - South African officials have built a housing development of fibreglass igloos for a colony of endangered penguins, hoping to replicate natural nesting grounds damaged by environmental degradation.

The penguin housing colony on Dyer Island near Cape Town is seen as last ditch effort to save the colony, which has dwindled to just 5,000 animals from 25,000 in the 1970s, officials said on Tuesday.

"We're trying to copy the natural system. Academics and scientists have given us input and we're monitoring success on an ongoing basis," said Lauren Waller, nature conservator for CapeNature, the provincial environmental preservation body.

Dyer Island, a bleak islet popular with shark spotting tours, was once rich in nutrient-rich guano — bird faeces — but has seen the resource stripped by commercial enterprises who sell it as fertiliser.

That proved bad news for the African penguins — formerly known as Jackass penguins — which rely on guano to nest their eggs, hide from predators and provide a rare spot of shade on an island almost devoid of trees and bushes.

Conservationists now plan to construct up to 2,000 artificial burrows on the island, hoping the fibreglass igloos will persuade more penguins to procreate.

The fools. Don't they realize that the evil flightless waterfowl are not dwindling in numbers? They are just invading other places. Like Britain. Or Rio de Janeiro. Or even Texas.

(More on the Artists Formerly Known as Jackass Penguins here.)