How To Kill A Penquin

Who alive could ever forget the great Captain Hazelwood, drunk as a loon, at the helm of the giant oil tanker "Exxon Valdez" as he steered it directly into the rocks off the Prince Edward Isles?  I can picture still those boomers put out into the far reaches of the ocean trying to contain the black tary slime before it went further out to sea.  But what will always stay with me is the image of self-less Greenpeace workers and many hundreds of volunteers out there cleaning rocks with soap and water and a scrub brush.  They were hearty.

Something that wasn't so wonderful, however, was the way they tried to save the water fowl, the penguins, all manner of sea life, which came ashore caked in oil and unable to fly or swim.  People got out their pails of soapy water and ever-so-gently washed away the oil from each creature, then setting it free in the unpolluted area set aside for that purpose.  It took many months (yes!) before marine ornithologists took to their alerts and explained that all this soap, no matter the good intent, was killing these animals, as it removed their most essential life-saving feature:  waterproofing.  That layer is what kept those animals from drowning, from hyperthermia, from starvation.  Once removed by this soapy mixture the water fowl would soon, within only a day or two, either freeze or starve to death.

It was when their little corpses started to wash ashore that the human animal realized their tragic mistake and though their intentions were of the most noble in orientation, the result was catastrophic, as many of us remember.  These good folk truly worked hard, for as we all know, oil and water don't mix, so they spent many hours using elbow grease (scuse the pun) scrubbing those penguins and sea otters - but removing their one source of survival in the cold waters off the sound.

The world learned from this lessen - it would seem. 

Just last week I saw something that brought all those memories back, and it boiled my britches.  The makers of "Dawn" Liquid detergent have a commercial out showing a woman and her daughter bonding (in suitable slow-mo) as they scrub a little penquin clean with a toothbrush and - need I say it?  That soapy ooze.  Either they have short memories or something's gone terribly wrong with the world, but when you remove the extremely valuable waterproofing of these fowl it's akin to removing our own skin - we'd die of infections within, what, hours?

I'm also adding a little medical info, just for frustration's sake:  The more you use these liquid "Anitibiodic" soaps, the more immune germs will become to any effectiveness they may have on your hands.  These liquid "anti" soaps are the biggest rip-off health hazards and no one cares since money flows and people think they're protecting themselves against germs.  They're actually making themselves more prone, more susceptible.  The best soap in the world is one with no color, perfume or added "anti" anything.  But we'll continue to help what are fast becoming "super-bugs" which hospitals all over the world have already seen developing for years.  Wide-spectrum antibiotic rounds do little to stave off the fevers and lesions associated with these germs.  And it's all because we thought we weren't CLEAN ENOUGH! 

I'm going to sleep, dream about mud puddles.