Penguin Poop

Cleaning penguin poop is not an easy job. For starters, the poop isn’t solid like normal animals' poop is. In fact, it is often a foul, liquidy mess in varying shades of white, grey, black and green, depending, I suppose, on what the penguin ate in the past few days. Since the poop tends to be liquidy, it can’t be scooped up with a modified pooper scooper, nor can it be shoveled, swept, vacuumed, or ignored.

At the aquarium where I used to work, penguin poop had to be removed from the exhibit, DAILY. Completing this delightful task required the skill and expertise of two highly underpaid college graduates (unless it was the summer time, and then the especially talented high school kids were also given this honor) to scrap, scrub, and scour the exhibit clean.

Of all the crappy jobs at the aquarium (and believe me, there were dozens of them) cleaning the penguin exhibit was the worst, or one of the worst punishments, depending upon what day you asked me. There would be days on my drive to work when I would think back over the tasks I had done that week and I would become increasingly frantic as I realized I had not had to clean the penguin exhibit in, oh god, a day or two…so… it must…it must be my turn soon! Waves of dread would wash over me. My stomach would clench, already knowing what was coming next and I would wonder, again, if I could pay this month’s rent if I called out sick.

Generally there were two of us unfortunate souls sent to clean the penguin exhibit each day. Sometimes, on really special days, you would be scheduled to clean the exhibit twice! Those were my most favorite days of all, the days you knew everyone had in fact, abandoned you and your boss did indeed hate you.

On a typical crappy, penguin cleaning day, you and your partner in misery would enter the exhibit through the secret side door and immediately be pummeled in the face by the moist, oppressive sponge-like air and the stomach lurching scent of shit. This was a gentle reminder of all the fun that awaited you.

If you and your partner liked each other, you might not argue over who got to wear the full-length waders and who got to wear just the rubber boots. Not that it really mattered who wore what. The waist high waders never dried from the person who wore them before you and the boots were always filled with the residual skanky water and lingering shit from the last unfortunate soul who sloshed around in them. No matter what you wore to clean the exhibit, on a good day, you were going to reek of stagnant water and disinfectant. On a really bad day, a whole world of filth, decay and fermenting feces eagerly plotted how best to land on your clothes, your skin, your hair.

Also, if you and your cleaning partner liked each other, you might not argue over who got to get down on all fours and scrub, scrub, scrub while the other person wielded the hose and hopefully avoided soaking you in the process. Neither job was necessarily better than the other. The only real advantage to being the one wielding the hose was that you were further removed from flying excrement.

I don’t know if you’ve ever thought about this, but runny, nearly liquid penguin poop is going to spray EVERYWHERE when you try to clean it up and I mean EVERYWHERE! Your hair, your eyes, your face, your arms and legs, nothing is safe from this foul smelling beast. Sometimes you would get really luck and spray the slime of decaying fish and squid guts all over you, which always added to the overall charm of your new perfume.

The unfortunate soul who agreed to or was bullied into scrubbing the exhibit had a different sort of fun experience. Generally this loathsome task was done while on your hands and knees with a crappy Dollar Store scrub brush as your only defense mechanism. Naturally, in this vulnerable position, the penguins tended to gang up on the person with their ass in the air and avoid the person who could pressure wash them into oblivion. As you were bending over the exhibit’s fake rocks trying to clean up crap, the penguins, which look cute and fluffy to the visitors on the other side of the looking glass, would peck at your arms, your legs, your hair, your anything they could reach. While it is true that penguins do not have teeth, they have the bite of Satan in them and it hurt like hell and bruised for weeks!

The absolute worst time EVER to clean the penguin exhibit was when the little fuckers were molting. Molting is nature’s way of punishing stupid humans who think it is a good idea to force creatures into captivity for the sole purpose of making money off of them. There are no other possible explanations for molting in captivity. None. The penguins did not need to get new feathers every season, it’s not like they had other penguins to impress and it’s not like the visitors cared how old the damn feathers were. Most people would have thought those evil demons were cute even if their heads caught on fire!

When the penguins were molting, not only did their feathers fall off all over the place, but they adhered to everything within the exhibit. Now, not only were the penguin cleaners going to be covered in shit, they were also going to be covered in old feathers, old shit covered feathers, and decaying fish guts and squid body parts which were also covered in old feathers and shit.

Imagine a pillow fight, with six to a dozen pillows all simultaneously belching their feathers out and landing in piles of shit. Add to that image a cold swimming pool or ocean or whatever the hell that nasty water thing was supposed to be, full of feces and feathers, which also needed to be cleaned out. Stir in the occasional remains of fish guts and a bunch of pissed off and obnoxiously curious penguins as well as a co-worker wielding a glorified pressure washer and you have a recipe for disaster.

There were times, oh how there were times, when it was all I could do not to plant my soggy, foul smelling boot up the nearest penguin’s ass and hopefully send it sailing clear across the exhibit. I imagine it landing with its beak embedded in the side of the fake rocks and I would laugh uproariously. Most days this image was the only thing that kept me sane.

Seriously, it got to the point where I would dream about, even fantasize about kicking, hurting, torturing penguins. In my most vivid and exciting dreams, I would kick a penguin or two or three clear across the friggin’ exhibit, one right after the other, as a crowd of horrified children and their teachers or parents looked on. In these dreams, there was nothing anyone could do to stop me. I was a penguin kicking bad-ass.

I wish I could say those dreams brought me relief, brought a smile to my face, or at the very least, caused me to look for another job, but alas, none of it was so. For far too long and with and increasing bitterness towards all penguins everywhere, I continued to clean their crap, nurse my bruises and plot my revenge.