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"And Tango Makes Three," is based on a true story of two male penguins, named Roy and Silo, who adopted an abandoned egg at New York City's Central Park Zoo in the late 1990s. The book, written by Peter Parnell and Justin Richardson, was moved to the non-fiction sections of Rolling Hills' Consolidated Library's branches in Savannah and St. Joseph in northwest Missouri. Silo and Roy are chinstrap penguins. They set up housekeeping together and for six years were completely devoted to each other and inseparable. Their chief keeper, Rob Gramzay discovered that the couple put a rock simulating an egg in their nest and sat on it, keeping it warm in the folds of their abdomens. Gramzay finally gave them a fertile egg that needed care to hatch. Things went perfectly. Roy and Silo sat on it for the typical 34 days until a chick, Tango, was born. For the next two and a half months they raised Tango, keeping her warm and feeding her food from their beaks until she could go out into the world on her own. Shiloh Elementary School say the book deals with homosexuality and that, they say, is a topic for parents not schools. The school board is resisting calls for the book's removal but parents say they will continue fighting. Zoologists say that it is an over simplification to call the penguins gay, but exactly what bound the two, and other examples of same-sex relationships among animals remains a mystery. Early last year, after "And Tango Makes Three" was written the penguin couple broke up. For a brief period Roy lived with a female penguin. ©365Gay.com 2006 |
(Shiloh,
Illinois) A popular children's book about two male penguins who
raise a baby penguin has has raised the ire of parents in this community
about 20 miles east of St Louis with demands that it be removed
from the bookshelves of a local school.