So whenever that was last week, the day Jackson took me to Sephora -- before Sephora we went to Ben and Jerry's and while Jackson ate his cone we sat on some steps and tried to figure out what was going on with these guys.
Apologies for the bad angle on the giant penguin. The giant penguin in yellow shoes whose job it seemed to be to silently lure unsuspecting children into some one-on-one story time with the human in the blue shirt. Either they had hypnotized that little girl into sitting there without moving or that is one extremely realistic prop child.
The penguin's hat said "NORKY" on it so we took that to be its name. I began to quietly speculate about some sort of north pole association with the name Norky and all, but since penguins only live at the south pole I was then led to assume that Norky was a very, very lonely north pole penguin made even lonelier by his one enormous gloved hand and ghoulishly pleading eyes.
Just waiting for someone to come and be his friend.
I guessed that the human, in the meantime, was deep into a detailed retelling of the sad, lonely story of Norky, the penguin who lived at the wrong pole and could only wear the cast-offs he'd scavenged from improperly clothed dead polar explorers.
The whole thing was just tragic, really. What horrors was that prop child being subjected to?
But wait! A friend?
"Go hug the penguin!"
"No, mama!"
"HUG HIM! HE NEEDS A HUG!!"
"AAAAIIEEEEEEE!!!"
At this point Jackson had started to become bored with my humorous (to me alone, apparently) speculations about Norky's gender and diet. It wasn't until I was halfway through writing this post that I even bothered to look for Norky on Amazon and lo and behold, I couldn't have been more delighted to find out the true meaning of Norky.
Norky is a hybrid penguin-eagle -- a peneagle, if you will -- who lives at the north pole and look! Teenagers have come to mock Norky with their camera phones.
I'd link to Norky's crazily over-capitalized web site but after all that trouble I had with Miffy (see here and here) I'm going to have to let you sort this one out on your own.