A would-be deleted scene from the seminal, 2007 cinematic epic, Surf’s Up, went down in real life recently when an emperor penguin showed up during a surf session in Western Australia. Sadly, Chicken Joe was nowhere to be found. Probably too far of a swim for the blasé fowl to swim.
The surprise guest showed up at a beach in Norway, Australia, a town over 250 miles from Perth. That’s 2,100 miles away from the penguin’s home in Antarctica. Now, emperor penguins have been known to travel up to 1,000 miles in search of food, but the distance from the Antarctica to Australia is nearly unheard of. And the surfers who found the penguin? They were rightfully shocked.
“There was this big bird in the water, kinda like coming out of the waves,” surfer Aaron Fowler, who was in the water when the surprise guest showed up, told ABC. “He just waddled over to us, and came right up to us. He tried to do, like, a lunge forward onto his belly [like it was snow] but he just went derp into the sand. It definitely was the coolest wildlife experience I’ve ever had.”
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Due to the extreme distance, and the extreme rarity, it’s suspected that this was the first-time in history that an emperor penguin swam its way to the shores of Australia. It’s possible that the bird was on a hunting expedition, when it got caught in a current, which took him all the up to Oz.
As suspected, on account of the journey, the animal was malnourished. He was half the weight of the average emperor penguin. A wildlife rescue duo, Carol and Graham Biddulph, jumped in to help.
“The care, attention and efforts of Carol and Graham Biddulph has given the Antarctic bird, found thousands of kilometers outside of its home range and in a different climate, a fighting chance of survival,” a representative from Australia’s Department of Biodiversity, Conservation and Attractions (DBCA) wrote in a press release.
Once they nursed the bird – affectionately named Gus – back to health, a team transported him back to his home in Antarctica. Happy ending for all. But no live action Surf’s Up remake…for now.
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