Are Starving Puffin Chicks Just Entitled Narcissists?

SEAL ISLAND, MACHIAS – A report issued by the Atlantic Laboratory for Avian Research found that 2016 has been the worst breeding season in recorded history for the Atlantic Puffin, with a vast majority of puffin chicks starving to death in their nests. This tragedy was caused by a disruption in the food supply this past June, which scientists suspect is due in no small part to a warming ocean and changing climate.  The reduction in fish stocks has seen a corresponding drop in the survival rate of puffin chicks, with 60% of chicks starving to death in their burrows.

The remaining chicks that are fledging and heading out to sea remain underweight and malnourished, and scientists do not expect that they will survive long enough to become breeding adults– and even those that do may never be able to build a nest of their own.

Larry Roark, a 54 year old office manager at Exxon Mobil’s Houston office, was in Machias on vacation, and offered his unsolicited opinion to everyone in earshot, “If you ask me, these puffin chicks are just too lazy to get a job.  They sit around in their nest tweeting a bunch of nonsense, just lazing about and mooching off their parents.  Why when I was a kid I worked part time at McDonald’s and earned enough money to go to college and get my MBA.”

He went on to point out that if this next generation of puffins starved to death before reaching adulthood, it was not because of a tanking ecosystem, driven by climate disruption that has been caused largely by his own industry, but because the puffins simply didn’t work hard enough because this particular generation of puffins are “lazy, entitled narcissists.”

Roark continued, “If you want to just laze about, going swimming and eating fish for free all day, that’s what you get.  My parents taught me that if you want a fish, you work for it, and you save up enough money to buy that fish.”

When asked if poor work ethic was the cause of a 60% decline in puffin survival, scientists at the Atlantic Laboratory for Avian Research were mostly confused.

Research director Kimberly Engels responded, saying simply, “The puffin is an apex species and as such, it’s overall health as a species is a barometer for the health of the entire ecosystem. Also, that Roark guy over there is clearly an idiot.”


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