And tango makes three


In the middle of NYC there's a great big park called Central Park.

Children love to play there, it has a toy boat pond where they can sail their boats, it has a carousel
to ride on in the summer and a nice ice rink to skate on in the winter.
Best of all it has its own zoo. Every day families of all kinds go to visit the animals that live there.
But children and their families aren't the only families at the zoo, the animals make the families of their own.

There are road panda bear families with mothers and fathers and very furry panda bears chubs; there are monkey dads and monkey moms raising their noisy monkey babies.
There are toad families and toucan families.

And at the penguin house there are penguin families. Every year at the same time the girl penguins start noticing the boy penguins and the boys start noticing the girls.

When the right boy and the right girl find each other, they become a couple. Two penguins at the penguin house were a little bit different. One was named Roy and the other was named Saloy.
Roy and Saloy were both boys but they did everything together. They bowed to each other and walked together; they sang to each other and they swam together. Wherever Roy went, Saloy went too. They didn't spend much time with the girl penguins and the girls didn't spend much time with them. Instead Roy and Saloy vowed their necks around each other. Their keeper mr. Gramsy noticed the two penguins and thought to himself “They must be in love”.
Roy and Saloy watched how the other penguins made a home. So they made the nest of stones
for themselves. Every night Roy and Saloy swept there together just like the other penguin couples.

And every morning Roy and Saloy woke up together but one day Roy and Saloy saw that the other couples could do something that they could not. The mama penguin would lay an egg and she and a papa would keep turns to keep it warm until it finally would hatch and it would be a baby penguin.
Roy and Saloy had no egg to sit on and keep warm, they had no baby chick to feed, nest and love.
Their nest was nice but it was a little empty. One day Roy found what looked like what the other penguins were hatching and brought it to their nest.

It was only a rock but Saloy carefully sat in it and sat... and sat. When Saloy got sleepy he slept. And when Saloy was done sleeping and sitting, he swam. And Roy sat.
day after day Roy and Saloy sat on the rock but nothing happened. Then mr. Gramsy got an idea. He found an egg that needed to be cared for, and brought it to the Roy and Saloy's nest.

Roy and Saloy knew what to do, they moved the egg to the center of their nest, every day they turned it so their side stayed warm. Some days Roy sat while Saloy went for food. Other days it was Saloy's turn to care of their egg.

They sat in the morning and they sat at night. They sat through the lunchtime and swim time and supper. They sat at the beginning of the month and at the end of the month.


And they sat all of the days in between.
Until one day they heard the sound coming from inside of their egg: “peep peep peep”, it said. Roy and Saloy called back “Squak! Squak!”; “peep peep peep” answered the egg.
Suddenly a tiny hole appeared in the egg's shell. And then... CRACK! Out came their very own baby.
He had fuzzy white feathers and a funny black beak. Now Roy and Saloy were fathers.
“We'll call it Tango” mr. Gramsy decided because it takes two to make a tango.
Roy and Saloy taught Tango how to sing for them when she was hungry. They feed her with food in their beaks and snuggled her in the nest at night.
Tango was the first penguin at the zoo to have two daddies. Soon Tango grew strong enough to leave the nest. Roy and Saloy took her for a swim, just like the other penguin families.
And all the children who came to the zoo could see Tango and her two fathers playing in the penguin house with the other penguins.

“Hurray Roy ! Hurray Saloy! Welcome Tango!” they cheered.
At night the three penguins returned to their nest. There they snuggled together and like all other penguins in the penguin house, and all the other animals in the zoo, and all the families in the city around them they went to sleep.

The end.