Cute and cuddly? Not always...

Invasion of the Fluffy Penguins from Mars

It all started innocently enough. My husband is a penguin fanatic and
naive that I was, I thought it wouldn't hurt to buy him a stuffed penguin
for his birthday. He loved the penguin and it took pride of place on his
bedside table, beneath the lamp.

Gradually however, we began to notice that soon there were three penguins,
then four, then five. When they reached ten, we knew that something had
to be done. They wouldn't all fit on the bedside table. Shelving was
called for and a shopping expedition ensued. The penguins had us right
where they wanted us.

Once the six tier shelving unit was purchased and set up, the penguins
began multiplying rapidly until all six shelves were full. We noticed
that not only were there fluffy penguins on the shelves (although they
were in the majority), there were glass penguins, crystal penguins,
an inflatable penguin shaped soap dish, two ceramic penguins in a little
boat, pottery penguins, penguin keyrings, wind up penguins that skittered
madly across the floor, knitted penguins, Beanie Baby penguins, a
penguin ice scraper, a penguin loofah and then they began to spread
throughout the house.

First it was penguin mugs, then penguin ties, penguin calendars, penguin
corkscrew, penguin postcards, a musical penguin that danced to the tinny
whine of "Jingle Bells". We defeated that one by removing its powersource -
4 AA batteries. Who knew that Martian Penguins would use the same
batteries as us?

We don't know who the leader of the penguins are, or what they get up
to when we're not in the house. Piri Piri is one of the smaller penguins,
he came from the spacehsip known as The Bargain Bin and he is quite
mischievous, although not malicious.

Pyrotechnic is what one might expect from a Martian penguin. He has
long pink legs, reminiscent of a flamingo rather than a penguin, and
he is a party animal. His favourite Earth song is "Shadow Cabinet" by
the Australian rock band, "The Church".

Panjandrum is a Martian Shapeshifter Penguin, although he can only
do two shapes, a penguin, and a globe of the world. He can't do Mars,
even though he is a Martian penguin. You have to turn him inside out to
see the globe of the world, and although he assures us that it doesn't
hurt, we've only done it once.

Chilli is the largest of the penguins, with a red and white candy
striped waistcoat, that would not look out of place on a barbershop
choir, although he doesn't sing. He has a smaller cousin called Paprika,
who looks exactly like him, except he's in miniature.

The invasion happened gradually, peacefully, over a number of years,
but we realise now that that is how they planned it. They like to lull
you into a false sense of security and then one day they will----

Note from publisher. This is how we received the story. Repeated
attempts to contact the author have failed. If anyone knows the
whereabouts of the author, please contact us at - what was that? Did
you see that? I must be going mad. I thought I saw a *flying* penguin.
With teeth. Very large teeth.