Penguins and possums and fruit bats, oh my!

PENGUINS.

Sorry, I like to think I'm normally slightly more eloquent than that, but it has to be said: I SAW PENGUINS IN THE WILD! Real, live, tiny, cute, shy, beautiful PENGUINS!
John, a fellow Yarra-n, took Jason and me out to St. Kilda's beach last night; a short walk along the pier, a hop, skip and a jump along a frankly somewhat perillous walkway spanning the riled ocean, and there they were.

PENGUINS.

Real, live, fuzzy, breathing, squawking PENGUINS! I was a foot away from one at one point- I could have reached out and touched him, had I so desired. I didn't, because that would have been cruel and I'm not a cruel person, but by God, it was tempting. The species I saw were called 'Little Penguins', changed from the not so PC 'Fairy Penguins'. And they look like this:


Ladies.

 They are the most adorable thing one could imagine, and one looked right at me with his beady little eyes and I genuinely wanted to just squeal (ask Jason and I probably did.) Sadly, I was only allowed to coo over them for about half-an-hour as we had to return before our parking ticket ran out. But I will return. I vow this. I will see more

PENGUINS.

Real, live, terrified, kidnapped, mine now PENGUINS.

Epilogue:
To make sense of the title, Jason and I went for a stroll before I trip to see the- well, you know. And we saw a fruit bat, very large, very fast, very close.
And then another.
And another.
Then four.
Then five.
You see where I'm going with this? There were hundreds, filling the sky, clogging the horizon with their slightly creepy silhouettes. It was slightly like the scene in the wizard of oz, where the witch sends her little minions out to get them! and I had to stop myself from calling out 'Monkeys' in a Rik Hart baritone. I elected not to so as not to annoy Jason by talking even more about TWWOO.
Then, on the way back, we saw a possum- smaller than the one which crossed my path a couple of weeks ago- he scarpered when he saw us: not up a tree, as expected, but down a train. Proving that a leopard may change its spots and a possum its exits.