Polar Pests

A group of tourists are being conducted on a trip through the Kalamazoo Zoo. The guide calls their attention to a laughing hyena (with a sour face), a jaguar (an automobile), and then to that rare specimen from the South Pole: a penguin. But the cage housing the penguin is missing, and the visitors see only a sign reading, “Gone South for the Winter.” The guide immediately rushes to the zoo’s board of directors and tells them that their prize penguin is missing. After some discussion, it’s decided that the guide shall go to the South Pole and retrieve the penguin who, of course, is Chilly Willy. The guide arrives and commences his search. Chilly tries to stay one step ahead of the zookeeper. The majority of the cartoon consists of the bumbling fellow trying to catch Chilly and being outsmarted by him, as well as by Wally Walrus. The guide falls through a hole in the ice and is pulled out by Wally, who’s trying to fish. Annoyed with his catch, the walrus warns the guide to go away and not disturb him. The guide finally spots Chilly, but is unable to catch him with sleeping pills because Chilly, thinking that they’re balls, starts juggling them, so the guide has to demonstrate how the pills should be used. He swallows one himself and soon thereafter falls asleep. Upon awakening, the guide again tries to catch Chilly, but he succeeds only in enraging the walrus, whose every attempt at fishing is interrupted by the two “Polar Pests.” As a last resort to catch Chilly, the guide disguises himself as a penguin. He has Chilly in his grasp when the walrus sneaks up behind the guide and snares him in a net. The walrus throws the guide into the box intended for Chilly and ships it back to the States. The zoo’s directors are confounded when they open the box and discover a giant penguin inside. But they’re even more confounded when the penguin, trying to explain who he is, talks. “A talking penguin!” they exclaim, and they immediately rush him off to the zoo. Our poor guide, slowly going daffy, becomes the star attraction, billed as a “talking penguin.” He tells the gawking kids to “get lost!”