The Odd Journey of a Penguin and His New Kicks
Our American Stories
iHeartPodcasts
4.6 • 817 Ratings
🗓️ 18 December 2025
⏱️ 8 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On this episode of Our American Stories, Enrique had lived a long, dignified life at the St. Louis Zoo when age finally caught up to his feet. Arthritis doesn’t care whether you’re human or penguin, and soon every step told his keepers something needed to change. What followed wasn’t a grand breakthrough so much as a series of small experiments that eventually pointed toward an idea no one expected — shoes. Marija Elden walks us through how an aging bird, some stubborn symptoms, and a whole lot of trial and error turned into one of the zoo’s most quietly charming success stories.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is an IHeart podcast. |
| 0:02.6 | Guaranteed Human. |
| 0:14.5 | This is Lee Habib, and this is Our American Stories, |
| 0:18.5 | and we tell stories about everything on this show, |
| 0:21.7 | and we love your stories. Send them to Our American Stories.com. stories about everything on this show and we love your story. |
| 0:23.7 | Send them to Our American Stories.com. |
| 0:25.0 | You're some of our favorites. |
| 0:27.7 | Today, you're going to hear from Maria Eldon. |
| 0:32.1 | Maria is the zoological manager of birds, the St. Louis Zoo. |
| 0:39.6 | She'll be speaking on behalf of Enrique, a 30-year-old penguin with arthritis, who just so happens to wear shoes. |
| 0:49.7 | Enrique is a southern rockhopper penguin, and he is an elderly bird. He's about 30 years old. |
| 0:57.0 | Penguins tend to live about 15 years old. Penguins that live in zoos live a very cushy life. He's just a gentle bird. |
| 0:59.0 | He is really easygoing. |
| 1:01.0 | That's unlike rock hoppers a little bit. |
| 1:03.0 | Rockhoppers are very vivacious, very in your face. |
| 1:08.0 | But Enrique kind of has a softer side to him. |
| 1:11.7 | He is quite the handsome little bird. |
| 1:14.9 | He's got a girlfriend, and apparently as we found out this morning, another female liked |
| 1:22.0 | what she saw. |
| 1:23.4 | So this morning, he had two girlfriends. |
| 1:27.8 | Enrique came to St. Louis Zoo in 2016, and he, prior to that, had lived at Omaha Zoo. |
| 1:36.2 | Zoos talk to each other a lot. |
... |
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