Using up the ends…

from the Australian Associated Press:

A worldwide army of little old ladies has found some far more
appreciative recipients than grandchildren for their handknitted
woollen jumpers.

Their loving efforts to help sick little penguins off the
southern coast of Australia have given new meaning to the term
penguin suit.

About 26,000 little, or fairy, penguins – which at up to 33cm
tall are the world’s smallest penguin species – make their home on
and around Philip Island Nature Park, a major tourist attraction
about 80km south-east of Melbourne.

Each evening at sunset, up to 2,000 penguins swim ashore at
Summerland Beach and waddle up to their sand-dune burrows,
delighting more than half a million visitors each year.

But every month, nature park volunteers find one or two penguins
covered in oil.

And occasionally a major spill leaves hundreds in peril.

A German shipping company was last year fined more than $1
million for a 2003 spill at Philip Island that covered 12km of the
coast, coating 24 penguins and killing three.

It was the latest of about half a dozen significant spills to
have plagued the area in the last decade, including one in December
2001 that coated 360 penguins and another in 2000 that affected
more than 200 and killed 12.

It’s at these times that the grey army’s knitting skills come in
handy.

Usually the little penguins’ dark blue waterproof feathers keep
their skin absolutely dry and able to cope with the bitterly cold
water of Bass Strait.

But the oil – as well as its removal process – interferes with
their natural insulation, and the penguins, who swim straight to
shore after encountering a spill, are usually cold, hungry and
highly distressed when they are found, program coordinator Lyn Blom
said.

Despite the volunteers’ best efforts, until a few years ago
casualties were high.

But that changed in 1999 when the nature park put out a call for
knitters to turn their attention from snowflake sweaters and tea
cozies to penguin jumpers.

The doll size, tight-fitting 100 per cent wool sweaters keep the
penguins warm during the rehabilitation process and stop them
preening and ingesting the poisonous oil, and lifts their survival
rate to about 98 per cent.

Getting the jumpers on can be a struggle as the one kilogram
animals are more feisty than they look, Ms Blom said.

"They look small and cute, but they have small person syndrome
and they can be nasty," she said.

"They peck and they fight. You have to be pretty strong to
survive in the ocean, they have to be pretty savvy and look after
themselves and they do."

Distressed penguins might not care about the latest vogue
colours, but that doesn’t stop Ms Blom’s troop of committed
volunteers – mostly ladies in their "autumn years" with plenty of
spare time – letting their creativity swim free.

The knitters continually push the fashion envelope with matching
bride and groom outfits, AFL teams, and, from one elderly English
woman, "the whole Manchester United soccer team".

Read the article here.  This article may have already made its way around the blog-o-verse.  If so, I missed it.  Just in case you did too, I loved it.