Penguin power

I know a lot more about penguins than I did last week.Go ahead, ask me a question about emperor penguins, I'll bet I can answer it.

For example: Did you know seals eat emperor penguins? That's right, cute little seals gobble up penguins like popcorn.

Did you know emperor penguins walk some 70 miles to lay their eggs? Then the females walk all the way back to the ocean while the males keep the eggs warm in dire conditions like blizzards and windstorms. Once the eggs hatch, the females come back from the ocean, take care of the babies, and then the males walk to the ocean, eat a bunch of fish and krill and stuff and then they walk all the way back to the females. Then both of them take care of the babies for awhile.

And then, finally, like any good parent, they abandon them.

That's right. They abandon them and they're left alone to fend for themselves against seals and some other sort of large nasty bird that eats penguins.

(The filmmakers never actually bothered to tell you what sort of big nasty bird eats baby penguins, but by the looks of it, it was an albatross. It had big long wings and webbed feet and an ugly-looking head. The scene was rather disturbing because the big ugly bird kept pecking at the little penguins until it finally got hold of one and ate it. Well, you assume it ate it, the camera pans away at the last moment. It's not easy watching a penguin get killed by another big ugly bird. Baby penguins are pretty darn cute.)

I learned all about this in that new film, "The March of the Penguins," which has grossed something close to $100 million this summer.

It romanticizes the life of the emperor penguin, which lives on Antarctica some of the time and in the ocean a lot of the time.

Emperor penguins are fat birds with a voice that runs from shrill (the adults) to a warble (the young). And I wasn't making that stuff up about them walking back and forth to the ocean. It's all true.

The film was shown last weekend in Whitefish as a benefit for the Glacier Institute. My daughter, Olivia, once went to a Glacier Institute Camp, so we got an invitation to the film in the mail. I guess they invited Olivia, too, but we left her home. She had already seen the movie in Disneyworld on a recent vacation.

While Olivia enjoyed her stay in Florida (she caught one lizard) she said she was happy to be home. Florida was hotter than normal and it began to wear on her.

"I needed to see the mountains," she said, matter-of-factly, as she flopped on the couch after her long journey home.

At any rate, the penguin movie is a good one, but well, it is a bird flick and bird flicks aren't for everyone.

I mean, if your favorite movie of all time is Rambo, First Blood, then I suggest you pass on "March of the Penguins."

But if you're one of those people that have slid on their belly in the snow, well, this movie is right up your alley, or iceberg, if you will.

Chris Peterson is the editor and a columnist for the Hungry Horse News.