Australian Mormons Saving Penguins

Greetings and Salutations to All my Kith and Kin and All the Ships in Outer Space:

This is a delightful news report about Mormon women in Australia which is just too cute to be legal!

Attached to this e-mail is a news photograph.

Here is the text which accompanies that photograph:

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Mormon women in New South Wales are knitting sweaters for penguins.

Doll size, tight-fitting wool sweaters keep this breed of "fairy" penguins warm as they recover from exposure to oil spills off coastal Australia, dramatically raising their survival rate.

(Photograph courtesy of the Church of JESUS CHRIST of Latter-day Saints)

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Here is the URL for that newspaper report:

http://www.sltrib.com/faith/ci_3713118

Here is the text of that newspaper report:

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LATTER-DAY SAINT WOMEN DOING THEIR DARNDEST TO SAVE PENGUINS

By Peggy Fletcher Stack
The Salt Lake Tribune

Move over Morgan Freeman.

Mormons are on the march to save penguins - - -one skein at a time.

Latter-day Saint women in New South Wales have undertaken an unusual service project, knitting sweaters for cousins to the loveable stars of the Academy Award-winning documentary narrated by Freeman.

The smallest breed of penguins, often known as "fairy" penguins, tend to get caught in oil spills off the coast of Australia, which can destroy their natural oils or even kill them.

Doll size, tight-fitting wool sweaters can keep the penguins warm during the rehabilitation process, and "stop them preening and ingesting the poisonous oil," according to The Sydney Morning Herald.

The sweaters improve penguin survival rate to about ninety-eight percent, the paper reported.

Hearing about the penguins' plight, Jenny Allen and Marion Braun, members of The Church of JESUS CHRIST of Latter-day Saints from the coastal town of Coffs Harbour, organized a campaign to bring together Australian and New Zealand women aged fifty to eighty to knit sweaters for the foot-high penguins.

With the help of Pet Porpoise Pool, an oceanarium in New South Wales, the group was able to rally over three hundred knitters and produce one thousand eight hundred doll-size sweaters, said a press release from the Church of JESUS CHRIST of Latter-day Saints.

Tourists flock to see these tiny penguins as they "parade" nightly from sea to shore at the Phillip Island Nature Reserve in Victoria, Australia. The knitters have produced so many colorful sweaters that some are now being sold in the reserve's gift shop on toy penguins, the release said.

The money that has been raised has allowed the reserve to build a rehabilitation pool.

E-Mail: pstack@sltrib.com

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I'll post this on my personal blog and also share it with my Australian mates.

Thank you.

John Robert Mallernee, KB3KWS
Official Bard of Clan Henderson
Armed Forces Retirement Home
Washington, D.C. 20011-8400

"My unpopular and controversial personal opinions are independent of my Scottish clan."