Category Archives: Book 7 – Antarctica and Beyond

Day 819: Gentoo

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One of the benefits of working at a research station in Antarctica was that on some days, Laetitia’s work took her to where there were penguin colonies.  On this day her work took her to a locale on the Antarctic Peninsula where there was a breeding colony of Gentoo penguins.  Unlike the Emperor penguins whose breeding areas are limited to Antarctica, there are Gentoo colonies on the Falklands, South Georgia, and several other islands in the southern hemisphere.  They are one of the taller penguin species – some are 35 inches in height.  They have black heads, backs, and wings and white fronts.  Their bills and feet are orange and they have a white patch behind each eye.  They have a more prominent tail than most penguins.  Their nests are circles of stone and usually contain two eggs.  Females are very particular about nesting stones and fights often occur over nesting stone ownership.  A male Gentoo wishing to win the heart of a female Gentoo might offer her an especially nice stone.  Laetitia made the Gentoo penguin the subject of the day’s limerick.

When gentlemen court some are prone
To offer their ladies a stone
Just like the male Gentoo
To females he would woo
To nest in the Antarctic Zone.

Day 818: BMW

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Email at the research station was undependable but Laetitia received one from Mind’s Eye Limerick Tours Headquarters, wherever that is, telling her that a group of American car buffs was interested in touring the BMW Museum in Munich, Germany.  She wrote back that she would conduct the tour when next she had a few hours off.

After she finished work on the appointed day, she went to her room, closed her eyes and, moments later, was in the library of the Emerald Victorian preparing the trip as the coffee finished brewing.  A short time later she was standing in the spacious and modern BMW Welt building as group members scattered throughout the main floor looking at new BMW models and riding in the new i3 electric car.  Afterwards, they crossed the street to the tower that houses the BMW Museum with antique automobiles, motorcycles and aircraft engines.  BMW purchased Rolls Royce about ten years ago so there was an exhibit with items from that company’s history as well.

BMW stands for Bayerische Moteren Werke (Bavarian Motor Works).  The company began life as a manufacturer of powerful, lightweight aircraft engines during World I and later expanded its product line into the motorcycles and automobiles for which it is best known today.  Laetitia made BMW the subject of the limerick of the day.

‘Tis the idol of many a dreamer
That motorcar some call the “Beamer”
That’s precise like a clock
No new kid on the block
‘Twas first built in the age of the steamer.

Day 817: Adélie 2

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Laetitia was curious about how the Adélie Penguin got its name.  Internet connections at the research station were somewhat sporadic, but with persistence she was able to get the information she wanted.  Adélie d’Urville was the wife of French Admiral Jules Dumont d’Urville who explored the Antarctic in the early nineteenth century.  He was an expert linguist, botanist, and cartographer with many meritorious accomplishments in those fields.  A number of botanical species are named after him.  The French also named their Antarctic research station after him.  He was from an ancient line of French nobility and when he wed Adélie Pepin, a watchmaker’s daughter, his mother believed he had married beneath his station and strongly disapproved.  Indeed, Adélie’s mother-in-law (belle-mère in French) refused to meet her or her children.  Admiral d’Urville and his family died tragically in the Versailles train crash, but Adélie’s name lives on.  In addition to the namesake penquin species, the area in Antarctica where the French research station is located is called Adélie Land

To Adélie, let’s some champagne quaff
On her belle-mère, she got the last laugh
Though she wasn’t respected
And her children rejected
She’d a penguin named on her behalf.

Day 816: Adélie 1

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Scientific research can be thrilling when the data has been analyzed and reveals something previously unknown to humankind.  However, collection of the data on which new findings are based is daily and repetitive and tends to be boring.  The highlight of Laetitia’s week at the research station was a visit to an island that had a colony of Adélie Penguins.  The birds were interesting and fun to watch.  The nesting area like those of all penguin colonies had a rank odor.  When she returned to the research station, Laetitia wrote down the day’s limerick and then began to work on the project that occupied her time when she wasn’t working.  Another of Uncle Milt’s famous parties was coming up and she needed at least one new song for it.

When she was a child visiting her grandmother, the books in the library fascinated her.  Especially interesting was a leather-bound illuminated edition of the Song of Songs.  How the Song of Songs, (also called Song of Solomon, orCanticles) came to be part of the Hebrew Bible and later the Old Testament is a bit of a mystery since it is not an overtly religious text.  Both Jewish and Christian scholars sometimes interpret it allegorically as representing God’s love for Israel or God’s love for the church, respectively, but phrases like “he shall lie all night twixt my breasts, the joints of thy thighs are like jewels, thy belly is like a heap of wheat,” and “thy two breasts are like two young roes that are twins” don’t seem to support that interpretation.  When Laetitia asked her grandmother about the book she said she received it as a wedding gift from her parish priest, a bit of sanctioned erotica presumably given to encourage a marriage blessed with lots of children.  She decided to surprise her grandmother with a song called Canticles that she and her cousins would perform at Uncle Milt’s next party.

When you go to dine a deli
Don’t think of that penguin, Adélie
For these birds tend to swill
On fish, squid and small krill
And their colonies tend to be smelly.