Part Two

Tuesday Morning, 0700 Hours

One would think that by now, having been around the penguins so long, Marlene would be used to being woken up by some crazy new commando scheme or loudly malfunctioning machines. Since it seemed like something went wrong every single day, you'd think Marlene would have the drill down-pat. Apparently not. The otter felt like she jumped ten feet in the air when she was rudely awoken by a loudly beeping device. Once she gained her bearings back, she turned to glare angrily at Kowalski.

"What are you doing?" she asked. "Why are you even up this early?"

"It's 0700," the penguin replied, waving a beeping wand around the habitat. "And besides, we need to get the area secured by 1100! We're having a very important visitor to the zoo today and we need to make sure the place is safe!" Marlene nodded, having learned long ago to just go along with the penguins when they said stuff like that.

"And who is this important visitor? The parks commissioner again?"

"No... today's guest is much higher-up in the government than the parks commissioner," Kowalski said mysteriously. "In fact, you could say he is the government. And that's why this zoo has to be locked down tighter than Skipper's monk-fish surprise recipe!" Marlene rolled her eyes.

"Yeah, OK. Just- try not to wake me up next time, alright?" But Kowalski didn't seem to hear her (or if he did, he didn't really care), and tucked the beeping rod, whatever it was, under his wing. "Otter habitat secure," he said into a microphone made of old netting and a sardine can. "Moving on to the lemur habitat!"

"Roger that," Skipper's tinny, digitized voice came through. And with that, Kowalski left Marlene's habitat with a jaunty wave. The otter just shrugged. The penguins were always weird, only today they seemed weirder than usual. The government coming to the zoo? Marlene didn't know a whole lot about the humans' government, but she knew that it was made up of many, many workers, not just one, and that they probably had much more important things to attend to than visit some random zoo, even if it was the Central Park Zoo.


Meanwhile, poor Private was trying to convince Joey to let him search his habitat. "Please, Joey, I need to make sure that there's nothing hiding in here, anything that could hurt the country! He's coming today!" The kangaroo sniffed.

"Joey don't like trespassers," he said. "And why should I care if America is coming? I'm not American!"

"Neither am I," Private replied, getting exasperated. "Look, I just need to wand your habitat and I'll be done. It will take five minutes, if that. I need to do this for security reasons." The irritable kangaroo looked at the penguin, then back to his habitat, then back to the penguin.

"Joey'll take care of everything in here," he said finally. "I'll do it myself. If you think there might be trespassers in here, then I want to deal with them myself, OK?" Private shrugged. Skipper probably wouldn't like it, but it was better than nothing, and besides, what reason would Joey have to try to attack America? And if there was anything in there, Joey would take care of it. The one thing that made Joey angrier than anything else was trespassers. He hated them. No, Private couldn't think of any animal dumb enough to try to cross the angry kangaroo.


Rico, however, was having difficulty with the badger sisters. "SKWAAAK BRAAWK ARK AWK SKWAK!" he yelled, hoping that if he was loud enough, they would understand him. Unfortunately, Becky and Stacy did not speak "psychosis" and had no idea what Rico was asking them.

"Do you know what he's saying?" Becky asked.

"Nope," Stacy replied.

"SKWAAAK BRAAWK ARK AWK SKWAK!"

"Stand down, Rico, I'll handle this," Skipper said, having seen the whole thing unfold through his binoculars. "Sorry to bother you this morning, ladies, but we've got to do a security sweep of all habitats. We have a very important guest coming today, and we need to make sure that this zoo is locked up tight. Rico was trying to tell you he needs to scan your habitat for hidden threats and intruders."

"Uh-huh," the pyromaniac nodded. Becky and Stacy exchanged glances.

"Do you really think there's something hiding out in our habitat?" Stacy asked nervously. "I mean, we didn't see anything, but what if, there's like, someone in there?"

"Yeah1 We've been in here all day! Do you think they're going to attack us?" Becky added.

"Not on my watch," Skipper replied. "Just let Rico in to scan and we'll have your habitat secure in no time at all!"


"You mean, someone more important than me is coming to the zoo? We cannot have this! I am the most important creature in this zoo! Me! Do you understand me!" King Julian raged. Apparently Kowalski's explanation of why he needed to search the lemur habitat was the wrong thing to say. Maurice rolled his eyes.

"Sorry about this, he's been thinking his authority is under attack ever since Mort found someone's lost cell phone. He likes some game on it better than the king's feet, and the king feels like he's losing his touch."

"Didn't this happen already?" Kowalski asked. "With the video game?"

"Yeah, and we're not going to make the same mistake again," Maurice replied. "Go ahead and search, I'll distract the king." While Kowalski slipped under the ranting king's radar to do his check of the area, Maurice offered to make King Julian a smoothy, which immediately took his mind off the problem of having someone more important than him coming to the zoo.

"Make sure it has lots of bananas, and mangoes, and passion-fruit, and guava, and lemon, and lime, and orange, and strawberry, and watermelon!" he exclaimed.

"Who the heck puts watermelon in a smoothy?" Maurice mumbled. "Yuk." But he did as the king requested, giving Kowalski enough time to finish his task. He waved back as he saw the penguin salute, showing that he was done.

After everyone met up to discuss their findings, it was decided that the zoo was about as secure as it was going to get.

"Nothing in the reptile house, Skipper, and Joey said he didn't find anything in his habitat. Mason and Phil's home is secure as well," Private reported.

"Excellent work, young Private! What about you, Rico?"

"Braawk skwak awk awk aaawwwwk ark skwaaaak skwak. Ark ark skwaaaak skwaaak braaaaawk. Awwwwk braawk skwak," the pyromaniac penguin replied. Skipper nodded.

"Badger, koala, and gorilla habitats are secure. Kowalski- report!"

"Marlene's habitat is safe, there's nothing wrong with the lemurs, other than the usual, and Burt's good. Nothing in there."

"Excellent," Skipper exclaimed. "Petting zoo, koalas, and our base are secure! Now, let's eat, then we'll do one last patrol around the zoo!"


Tony the pigeon was doing what a pigeon normally does in New York City- bobbing and weaving around on the sidewalk, trying to look cute and cuddly in the hopes that someone might take pity on him and toss him a french fry or a bit of hot-dog bun. Usually, tourists would humor him, saying things like, "Oh, look at the city pigeon! We don't have pigeons like him back in Omaha!" Tony usually wanted to tell them something like, "You don't have pigeons like me in your city? Tell that to my aunt Carmen/cousin Ralph/sister Anna/brother Salvatore/uncle Jim-Bob/grandma Charlotte/etc," but he never did. How could he? He was a pigeon. And he honestly didn't care. If the tourists wanted to believe that he was different from the pigeons in their home city, who was he to deny them?

A little girl had just tossed him a bit of a cinnamon bun which he happily gobbled up, causing the little girl to giggle. He liked that. He'd tell his multitude of siblings, cousins, friends, neighbors, random relatives, and other visiting pigeons to not poo on her. Suddenly, he found himself tackled to the ground.

"Woah, man, chill out! Was that your bit of cinnamon roll? I'm sorry, I thought she was throwing it to me!"

"Nyet," a dark voice muttered in his ear. "I do not want the bun of cinnamon. I know you pigeons go to the Central Park Zoo often." Tony looked up to see a grizzled old squirrel staring him in the face. "You will help me get inside the zoo at any cost. I need to get in there by 1100 today."

"1100?" Tony asked.

"Er, in your civilian time that would be 11:00. There is something I must do," the squirrel said. Tony looked around nervously.

"Uh, can't you just walk in like everyone else? It's not like they're going to chase you out- we go in all the time and we see squirrels in the park who come into the zoo relatively often. What do you need my help for?" This was getting very sketchy very quickly, and Tony didn't want to have anything to do with this. With his experience, squirrels were rather dumb animals, usually they'd need a map to find their own tail, but this one seemed different. By animal fur standards, he was a shocking red color, and he seemed to be quite a bit smarter than his other species-mates.

"Nyet," the squirrel said again. "I must avoid the penguins." Immediately, Tony wanted to be anywhere but there. If this squirrel had beef with the penguins he wasn't going to be touching that with a ten-foot pole. His friends Dushawn and Patrick had gone up against the penguins when the parks commissioner had gone to the zoo, and they'd turned their own weapons against them. Both pigeons had ended up covered in their own blueberry-enhanced poo.

"L-look, man," Tony stammered. "I don't know what problem you have with the penguins, but you're not getting me involved in it. Find someone else, I'm not sneaking you in the zoo." A click and a press of cold metal against his head made him stop and freeze.

"I do not think I was asking you," the squirrel said. "Now get me in that zoo." Tony gulped. The threat of getting shot was a wonderful motivator...

"Alright," he said. "Come with me."


At JFK International Airport, Alice the zookeeper stood on the tarmac with a bunch of other officials, waiting for Air Force One to touch down. She still couldn't understand for the life of her why Alfred F. Jones of all people was going to the zoo. Surely America had more important things to do than visit some podunk zoo in the middle of Central Park. Didn't he have, you know, American things to be doing?

"Stand up straight and don't scowl like that," one of the government officials told her. "Do you want to make a good impression or what?"

"Yeah, yeah," the cranky woman muttered, although she did correct her posture and try to arrange her face into something less angry than her usual default expression. After what seemed like an eternity, the plane touched down and Alfred exited.

"Hello," he said, walking up to Alice. "You must be the zookeeper. Thank you for taking the time out of your workday to be here, I really do appreciate it. I'm looking forward to seeing the zoo! Although I am hungry, is there anywhere to get something to eat in the zoo?" the man, apparently Alfred F. Jones, asked her.

Alice was speechless for a while. When she had been told that America himself was going to be coming to her zoo, she was expecting someone a lot more along the lines of Uncle Sam- older man, tall, dressed from head to toe in red, white and blue. This man looked to be barely out of his teens, and was wearing jeans and an old bomber jacket. She gathered her wits about her, though, to answer his question. "Uh, yes, if you'll follow me there's a car waiting. There's a food court in the zoo so you'll be able to get something to eat before the tour and the speech. There's stuff like pizza and burgers and salads."

"AWESOME!" Alfred yelled, surprising her. "I love burgers! This is turning out to be a great trip already! Oh, and by the way, does your zoo have penguins? I was told that I should look for penguins." Again, Alice was extremely surprised.

"Yeah, there's penguins, but they're the weirdest penguins I've ever seen. Let me know if you see them doing anything strange."

"Strange?" Alfred asked.

"You'll know it when you see it, trust me."

To Be Completed

Author's Comments:

Part two is finished, and I really need to be studying, not writing. Oh well.

The next part will be the last part- Alfred and the penguins will meet, and the Red Squirrel will carry out his plan.

-Kaboom