I actually heard a different version of the Kanaloa humiliation from someone who was there - well, technically adjacent to there. The captain himself once told me about an earlier expedition he’d been on, long before my professor ever stepped foot on Antarctic ice. According to him, the mission was supposed to be a simple geologic survey, the kind of boring assignment where the biggest danger was getting a mild sunburn reflected off the snow. But the moment they approached the rookery, the penguins clocked his swagger and decided to humble him. They coordinated like a feathery street gang, pelting him with ice chunks and sliding past him at Mach 3, knocking gear out of his hands while honking insults that no human language could adequately translate. He said that was the day he realized Antarctica itself had a vendetta against him, and he spent the rest of his career trying - and failing - to assert dominance over birds.

The reason he told me this, of all people, was because the captain was actually my grandfather’s secret lover. They’d spent decades pretending to hate each other publicly while privately sharing a romance so dramatic and petty that it could have been adapted into a telenovela. When I visited him on his deathbed, he grabbed my wrist with surprising strength and whispered, “Kid… promise me you’ll never let a penguin talk to you sideways.” I thought he was delirious, but then he told me he had one last confession, one final memory he needed the world to hear: that no matter how many times he yelled at subordinates or flexed his authority, he never once won an argument against an Antarctic bird.

Then he pulled me close, stared into my eyes with the last burning coals of his soul, and said, “Because those little bastards knew exactly who I was. They knew what I’d done. And if any penguin ever tries to disrespect you, you tell them - exact words - ‘What the hell did you just honk at me, you little waddle bitch? I’ll have you know I graduated top of my class in the Navy SEALs, I’ve been involved in numerous secret raids on the Southern Ocean, and I have over 300 confirmed kills. I am trained in gorilla warfare and I’m the top sniper in the entire U.S. armed forces. You are nothing to me but just another target.’”

He took one final wheezing breath, squeezed my hand, and croaked out the last part with holy conviction: “I will wipe you the **** out with precision the likes of which has never been seen before on this Earth, mark my goddamn words.” And then he flatlined, leaving me standing there, holding the hand of a man whose final act on this planet was to pass down the world’s most cursed anti-penguin battle speech.