Joppa’s penguins go into hibernation

BY ASHLYN G IROUX agiroux@newburyportnews.com

NEWBURYPORT — Fear not all those wondering where the beloved and iconic penguins of Joppa Flats are these days.

Michael Updike, of Newbury, who has been their ‘caretaker’ for years said they are taking their annual winter vacation to go ‘hibernate south.’

The four penguins live on the flats in the summer months and make their way ‘south,’ to Updike’s home, for the winter, he explained.

In terms of how the penguins came to be a popular Newburyport spectacle, Updike noted it began when his kids, now adults, were children.

“The kids were sort of middle childhood, like 8 and 10, and we were coming back from a soccer game in Lynn or Revere, one of those places, and we stopped at Newbury Comics and somehow, probably as an impulse buy, I thought we’d buy the penguin along with the Yugioh cards, and so we had this penguin and I said ‘Oh, I really should put it on an iceberg and put it out there” said Updike. “The kids didn’t really respond much, and then I thought ‘I don’t wanna be that dad who makes a promise or says something and doesn’t follow through.’ So, I went and got three more penguins and built the iceberg out of styrofoam and then put it out there, and the kids sort of looked at it for three seconds and went back to what they were doing,” he added.

Updike also noted that many of his former neighbors when he lived on Water Street in Newburyport, across from Simmons Beach where a clam shack currently sits, questioned where the penguins were and when they would be back.

“When I moved down here to Newbury, I brought the penguins and said ‘OK that’s the end of

See PENGUINS, Page A7

Newbury artist Michael Updike with the plastic penguins from his whimsical display in the Merrimack River off Joppa Flats, which he recently brought in for the winter.

MIKE SPRINGER/Staff photo

Newbury artist Michael Updike has created other floating art pieces for Newburyport.

. Continued from Page A1 that.’ But, all my former neighbors on Water Street kept saying ‘where are the penguins? We want the penguins back!’ So I just started putting it in in the spring and taking them out every fall, and it’s something that just I do,” he said.

After moving to Newbury, Updike put the penguins out on the marsh behind his home to the amusement of a few neighbors.

The penguins are out on the Joppa Flats every year by July 1, but are typically home for “hibernation” by mid to late fall. Updike brings them to and from the flats on his boat and ties the icebergs to an old mooring so the penguins won’t stray too far.

Updike said he will likely have to build another iceberg for the penguins over the winter as the one they have inhabited for the past 12 years has broken in half, separating the trio once standing en masse. There are four penguins altogether, with the other residing on its own iceberg, floating next to the group.

“On many occasions, they have broken free, and I sometimes go out in my boat and look which way the wind was blowing the day before and find them,” Updike said. “Or, other times they’ll break off the iceberg and people always bring them back.”

Updike also noted multiple incidents when neighbors would find the stray penguins, sometimes in their own yards and other times in the yards of others who came across the plastic birds, and put them on his porch. Other instances of Updike collecting the penguins for the winter have also resulted in the police being called.

He said the first instance occurred when “somebody driving by in a car saw me carrying the penguins and called the police and the police came and it was a cop who had gone to school with my son, and he’s like ‘you’re Trevor’s dad, I love those penguins.’” The next incident nearly resulted in another police call, Updike said, laughing.

“Another time, this woman who lived in my old house which I previously rented, she thought I was stealing them and she came out with her cell phone ready to go to 911, and I said ‘they’re mine,’ and that didn’t calm her down because she thought I was saying the finders keepers rule or something, and she like quizzed me. She said ‘if they’re your penguins, you tell me where you used to live,’ and I said ‘in your house,’ and then she calmed down after that,” he said.

Updike, the son of Pulitzer- prize winning author John Updike, is most notably a mixed media artist who studied bronze casting at Massachusetts College of Art as an undergraduate and later received his MFA from Vermont College. Updike specializes in carving designs on recycled slate shingles as well as creating personalized memorial stones.

He added that he has formerly created two other floating sculptures for Mosley’s Sculpture Park.

“I carved these sort of blue men out of styrofoam and made a raft for them to sort of emulate the painter Géricault’s ‘Raft of the Medusa,’ and then I had this vision that the Easter bunny would come in a boat that was like an egg and be rowing or, you know, paddling along,” Updike said. “It was a nice egg, the Easter bunny looked a little stiff but he was out there floating around just for Easter time at the same place when I lived on Water Street.”

Updike added that he typically takes the winters off, but currently has art work in three shops in Newburyport: the Nantucket Stock Exchange, the Tannery Marketplace and New England Sketchbook.

Ashlyn Giroux writes for The Daily News of Newburyport. Email her at: agiroux@ newburyportnews. com

Newbury artist Michael Updike bought the penguins at Newbury Comics, he says.

MIKE SPRINGER/Staff photo