Beep…Beep…Beep…’Oh no,’ I inwardly groaned. It was my watch. ‘Always with the beeping.’ I thought unhappily. ‘Some day, I’ll figure out how to change that.’

I slowly and involuntarily made to get out of bed. The big problem was, I wasn’t lying on a bed. I opened my eyes and saw…sky? ‘That can’t be right,’ I decided. I looked around me for an explanation, and what I saw shocked me. ‘Penguins?’ I inquired. I looked down and saw webbed feet…not exactly a great thing when concerning a human being.

When I decided to get up, I realized that I didn’t know how. Trying to roll over, I got strange looks from the penguins and a nice, cold (not to mention unexpected) swim in the ocean. When I got out of the water, I waddled over to the other penguins.

Getting a closer look a them, many bore strong resemblance to my classmates. It was an odd notion, but true. I was sure that somewhere in the crowd, I even heard my friend Jennifer’s incessant laughter.

It took me a moment to find her, but when I did, somehow, there was no doubt in my mind it was she. Simultaneously, we seemed to realize how ironic this was that we had all turned into, penguins. I, for one, didn’t think it was very funny. Apparently, she did.

This should have annoyed me, because she knew perfectly well that I have been utterly terrified of penguins since I was six, and I had a nightmare about an intoxicated penguin exploding in my bedroom, but at this point, I knew Jennifer too well to care. And, anything familiar to me was very welcome. It was then that I realized just how strange and worrisome our situation was.

I cocked my head slightly to one side, hoping she would get the message that I was really confused. At my gesture, she raised her wings in a way that closely resembled a shrug.

I sighed exasperatedly and was shocked when a loud screech pierced the air instead. All the penguins turned to stare, and just as I began trying to find a nice, big hole to crawl in, to hide, so the others would stop staring, Jennifer’s constant giggling snapped me back to reality. I mentally rolled my eyes. Some things would never change, penguins or no penguins.

Two hours later, Jennifer and I were standing together, having a staring contest, because there really wasn’t much else to do. We were all getting a bit hungry by now, because it was seven-thirty, and no one had eaten any breakfast yet. I, personally, would rather starve than eat raw fish! ‘But then again,’ I thought, ‘maybe this would be the perfect time to try it.’

After I won fourteen staring contests in a row, and Jennifer won all the breath-holding contests, we were starting to become comatose. I suggested that we go for a walk to look for food (still using signals). ‘We’re going to get really good at this eventually,’ I thought.

We had been walking for about a half an hour without coming across anything interesting, when I saw a giant bird with a four-foot wingspan, flying straight for us. It was then that I remembered what I had read about penguins earlier this year, and it was nothing good. I was almost positive that this bird was a skua. A skua is a bird that hunts small penguins. This was very bad.

I nudged Jennifer (who hadn’t yet noticed anyting) with my wing, and turned to look at the skua. She obviously understood because the next second, both of us were waddling as fast as our short legs would take us toward the ocean.

When we got there, we dove in, and didn’t come up for a good forty-five seconds. ‘Good thing we had those breath-holding contests,’ I thought to myself. Immediately after we came to the water’s surface, we checked the air for any sign of the skua. When we didn’t see any, my penguin instincts finally got the better of me, and I dove back into the water, grabbing a mouthful of fish.

This relief only lasted about thirty seconds, though, because as I swimming, I saw another natural predator, a seal. I threw Jennifer a panicked look I knew she wouldn’t miss, and swam quickly back to shore, where we both collapsed from exhaustion after our narrow escapes.

The next morning, I awoke to find myself back in my bed, a human being again, and smiling. ‘Another penguin peril.’