Walnut Stop it Hey, hey, hey, Walnut. No. Oh, there once was a puffin, just the shape of a muffin, and he lived on an island in the bright blue sea. He ate little fishes that were most delicious, and he had them for supper and he had them for tea. But this poor little puffin, he couldn't play nothing, for he hadn't anybody to play with at all. So he sat on his island and he cried for a while, and he felt very lonely and he felt very small.
Then a long came the fishes, and they said, if you wish you can have us for playmates, instead of for tea. So they now play together in all sorts of weather, and the puffin eats pancakes, like you and like me. We're going. Driving off the ferry, I recently went to Iceland. Foggy and raindrops. Yeah, with my colleague, Caitlin Roberts. It's like a movie set. Yeah, really is. And not just a regular Iceland. The green is so green.
I'm talking about extra super remote, sea spray, rocky cliffs, tiny island way off the south coast of Iceland. Iceland. I see it to the roof. I want to be going because on that island, there is a single fishing village. And in that fishing village, there is a house with a white door. And when you knock on that door, you will be greeted by a very polite family. My mom names Svava and her teenage son Tristy. Tristy? Tristy? And dad. Tristy? Sviggie. Tristy.
All of whom have invited you over for dinner. That was just food. Thank you. I'm very good. Thank you. What are you from? I'm from America. I'm from the far west coast from a place called Oregon. Yep. Have you been to the United States? No. And at first, it's going to be really awkward because you're strangers. Our daughter is going to batting now in Texas. Texas. Very America. But, no, I know all kinds of actions from America. Over the course of the dinner.
I'm going to go rob the train with my horse called Buckley. Buckley. And Australia. Do you come here to die? No, I can't hear you ask to die. Things will loosen up. I play guitar and vocals in general vocals. Buh. That sounds... Yeah! This is our sleepy, it has a girl. And eventually, you'll get around to the real reason you're here. But, uh, puffins. Yeah, the puffins. Puffins. From the New York Times, I'm Sam Anderson. This is Animal. Episode 2. Puffins.
Why do we have some interest in puffins? Good question. Good question. Well, I first learned about puffins in second grade. When a girl in my class stood up and read a poem about them. I must have been seven years old. About this lonely little puffin, stranded on an island with no friends. And somehow he ends up eating pancakes that fish cooked for him. I was enchanted. And ever since then, I've held puffins deep in my heart.
These black and white seabirds with rainbow colored little beaks who can swim and fly and carry like 20 fish in their beak at once. They're amazing. And I always thought about puffins from then on. And then somewhere along the line, I heard about this far away island where something unbelievable happens. At the end of every summer, every year, in the middle of the night, baby puffins start falling out of the sky. And I just couldn't believe that that was real.
They crash onto doorsteps, on top of people's cars, into storefronts, parking lots, everywhere. It sounds almost biblical. But it's just part of how puffins grow up in this part of the world. I mean, Iceland. Yeah, you're an investment app. A baby puffin is called, and get ready because this is very adorable. A puffling. Puffling. Or in Icelandic. It's called Pesia. I've got to write it down.
The lute of Pesia spends all summer deep in a burrow, this muddy hole that's been tunneled into the cliffs. And puffin parents only have one egg at a time, so it's down there all by itself. It sits there, and it waits for its parents to bring big, glistening beakfuls of silver floppy fish. And when the baby puffin is theoretically big enough to survive on its own, the parents just leave. They ditch it. And the little baby lute of Pesia is abandoned in its hole.
Until one night, all alone, very hungry, the puffling climbs up to the opening of its burrow, and it looks out at the ocean where all the food is, and it prepares to jump off the cliff and glide down to the freedom of the open sea. Where it will spend the next several years, never touching land, swimming around, learning how to be a grown-up puffin, diving for fish, finding a mate, and eventually returning to the same cliffs to start the cycle again. To have its own puffling.
But every year, some pufflings get confused. They think they're headed toward the beautiful moonlight reflected on the water. But instead they end up drifting down toward a well-lit gas station or someone's porch light. Because they're not able to fly, as pufflings, they only know how to fly. And when they land, they are stuck. Their little wings are really only good for gliding, so they can't take off again. They're landlocked and stunned.
And if a puffling is just left there in the street, all kinds of terrible things can happen. Long story short, it will not be growing up and having babies of its own, which just means a world with fewer puffins, is not a world you or I want to live in. So for generations, during puffling season, the families of Vesminare have been staying up all night to rescue these baby birds and release them back to the sea.
And after Swalevna Vestustu, after one of her houses in Heimene, she was in the same house with her wife and her wife. I had a high school. She was telling me there is one place on the island where people could go on their balcony and hunt puffins from their house. There's only one place in the world. Hunting puffins is also a family tradition here. This part of Iceland is home to the biggest puffing colony on Earth. There are way more puffins than there are people.
Living there and never eating a puffin would be like living in the middle of the greatest vineyard on Earth and never trying a grape. But you've never hunted puffins. No, that's not in our family. We are not a killer. We just eat that. Yeah, we just buy after it's been killed. It is very, very nice food. I love it. We smoke it. And have new potatoes and butter. But I'm not here to eat puffins. I've come here to save them. Are they hard to catch? Are they quick?
Or what is it like to try to catch? They can be very hard to catch. Some are just very calm. And since Tristy has been doing this since he was tiny, he's offered to be our Loan de Pesha guide. What kind of mood is it in? Consumed and mad. Puffling season only comes once a year, and it only lasts for a few weeks. So we had to come to vestmener at this exact moment. Even though for me personally, the timing is awkward.
Because my daughter Greta, my own little precious fuzzy puffling, is getting ready to go off to college. And if you're wondering how this is going to go for me, the other day at the grocery store, I started crying when I saw her favorite brand of applesauce. I like to come while it's still bright, and I could maybe try to show you some puffins. But these birds don't care about me and my stupid human timeline.
They will jump when they jump, which I'm hoping is soon, so that I can hurry up and rescue them, and still get home in time to send Greta off. You sit in the front seat, and that will be... Yeah. Do you want to hear what my mom says is unhealthy for my soul? Yeah, yeah. But it's called to the hellfire. So as we head down toward the harbor, Tristy cranks up the music. And that's the ultimate puffins or do you saw it? Yes, we'll get them to come to us. Hey, let me do what the music wants.
Maybe this is just a touchdown, because I just want to ask about... What's the strategy here? It is just patience. And looking out for the tiniest little dots and a shumble of puffin. Okay, what does the puffin look like? What are we looking for? A little black ball of feathers. Let's go up here. You know those very dark British crime dramas where every day there's a grizzly murder down at the docks? Just got us. Search every nook and granny. This looks like that.
And if you see something, it's cream up. Like torn chain link fences, huge buoys, industrial spools of rope. We're staring so hard. Our eyes are popping out of our heads. We're just looking for the tiniest hint of motion. Where are you, guys? Where are you? When we don't see anything down at the harbor, we check out the rest of this tiny island. We drive past the school. Has the golf course. Has this giant sculpture of a soccer ball on the side of a hill. Can't see any out there.
Again and again. Sometimes I think a lava rock is a puffin. Sometimes I think a little clump of grass is a puffin. Yeah, everything is a puffin when you're searching for it. It's the middle of the night and there are no puffins. I feel like this is like one of my grandpa used to take us out to see Santa Claus on Christmas Eve night.
We'd look up at the sky and we're going to be searching around and at some point he would act like he saw Santa Claus and we'd all sort of pretend like we saw little lights in the sky. We have 13 Santa Claus in Iceland. What? Yeah. So the Santa Claus is in Icelandic culture. They are like pranksters and kind of just assholes. They all break into your house. It's not like they sneak in through the chimney. And we just keep looping around. Has the school. Has the golf course. Has the soccer ball.
He steals from your meat factory. Has the school. Has the golf course. Has that soccer ball. It means, like, an eye patch looser. Has the docs. aha and the school golf course. Their mom each and not a children. Has the piece of lava that looks like a puffing but is not. Has the schools and golf course. Has the soccer ball. Has the golf course soccer ball. Oh sorry. Okay, so we get out and walk around. We can do that. It is now 10 million o'clock in the morning. This is all about patience.
It's just being patient that enjoying the walk, enjoying the smell. We're trying to enjoy it at least. And then out of nowhere, we see it. It tries to run, but it has nowhere to go. It's hemmed in by concrete walls. And so we all go sprinting toward this teeny panicking blob of feathers. The trusty lunges at it and just catches it with his bare hands. Hi. And here it is, a real live puffling. Nice job down here in the loaning dock.
Sleek with a black face and a bright white body as this long, sharp, pointy beak. That one. You're being rescued. Really clapping. The puffling has some fuzzy grey down on the back of its head, which is a sign that it might still be a little on the young side, and maybe wasn't quite ready to leave its burrow. Oh, always very tiny. But it did leave its burrow. It climbed right out to the edge of that hole and it made this brave leap of faith toward its new life. And it totally failed.
Everything went wrong. It smashed into pavement. And now here it is, clamped in a pair of human hands. It must feel like it's being abducted by aliens. Well, let it bite you. The biting doesn't hurt at all. It's the most adorable anger possible. And we all just stand around beaming at this little guy, overjoyed. We can't believe our luck. All a little shadow. And I was like, oh, no, that's just a pipe. And then it twisted and a pipe don't twist like that.
This has to be by far the worst night of this baby animal's life. But it's one of the best nights of my life. I'm finally standing face to face, beak to nose, with a living, breathing, squealing baby puffin. It's so much. It's generally fun. It's really fun sleeping tonight. So we pack up our little bird into a cardboard box where she will spend a long sleepless night scratching and squeaking and making terrible smells. I don't recommend cuddling with it. Right at the foot of my bed.
A little like up covered in poop. And you will have to search for it. While I am also not sleeping. But it'll all be worth it because tomorrow, we'll be sending her back out to sea. Good night. Good night. Oh, there he is. Oh yeah. Hello. Hi. Our friend Tristy had to go to Reykjavik on band business. So he called in some backup to help us. Okay. So. Torquette mode activated. His friend Arnar. My name is Arnar. Arnar. Yeah, it's probably a little hard to roll the ar.
Right. I think I'm just going to say Arnar. I'm sorry to him. Tristy and me, we are best friends. Arnar and Tristy are in a band together. Do you sing to her? Oh yeah. We, me and Tristy, we do joint guitar and vocals. And I always say vocals because it's not really singing as it is. Can you do the boo. Yeah. You know, that's like the Gremlin sound. Yeah. And then you can just do like more general stuff.
I guess what I'm asking is for you to improvise a song about rescuing pufflings in your heavy metal voice. You totally don't have to do this. Oh no, I am so going to do this. Searching down in the dark, desperate hole for the puffet of my soul. All right. Something like that. Arnar is a couple years older than Tristy. They met in a karate class. And like many islanders, he's been rescuing pufflings for as long as he can remember. One memory of that kind of sticks out.
So I must have been around eight years old. And we found a puffling that was like way too small. So that means that you have to take care of it for like a couple of weeks to let it grow bigger. So we did that. We had him for three weeks if I remember correctly. And I gave him a name and named him Kully. And he became my best friend. He ate like cat food, chicken and like a bunch of different stuff that we gave him. He was super funny as well.
And then you know the day came that he became big enough to release. So we brought him out to the cliff and you know I throw him up. And he looks kind of shaky at first. But he eventually kind of regains stability in flight. And I'm like, yes. Okay. See you in a couple of years. But then he just starts taking a no-stive down. And I'm like, okay, it's fine. He just wants to be closer to the ocean.
He eventually basically gets turned around and flies directly into the cliff and just explodes basically. Oh. And it all was like, no Kully. And then I started crying. It was a harsh lesson in how brutal nature can be. And it's just like, what are you going to do? So here we are at Hamad, where the cliff, this is the most common spot where people take them. Hey little buddy, we're going to get you out to the ocean, okay? Okay. He doesn't like my soothing words.
I have to say it feels weird to be rescuing a baby animal by throwing it off a cliff. This is an exciting time. This is your first time releasing a puffling. Yeah. I know. But that's what pufflings like. And so that is what we're doing. I am afraid something's going to go wrong and he's going to blow back into the cliff and die. Well, I believe in you. Okay. I mean, the wind is blowing very hard. Yeah, it is. The cliff. Very, very hard.
Okay, so you can just put the box down here and pick them up. So you want to basically cradle him with both of your hands. You want to keep the wings in. The technique is basically the same as swinging a kettlebell at the gym. Yeah, I do the kettlebell. It's the easiest. You're going to spread your legs really wide and hunch down and your arms just hang straight between your legs. Isn't he just going to fly back onto the land? No, because they like to fly against the wind. So I grip the bird.
Okay. He's struggling. It's surprisingly light in my hands. It almost feels like nothing. It feels like I'm about to throw a Kleenex off this cliff. Also, do we need to worry about these seagulls like eating him? No, no. They don't go for the pufflings. And I get in position. Okay, should I do it? Yeah, I think just give it the old college try and let's see what happened. And the bird sails out beyond the cliff's edge. It's flapping like a maniac. Flapping its absolute brains out.
It looks like a hummingbird. For a long, terrible moment, we watch our bird drifting backwards, struggling and losing altitude. Until miraculously, the puffling taps into some deep root of strength. It somehow manages to gain one molecule of an advantage over the wind. And it goes zipping just slightly forward, just barely missing the rock and starts half flying, half falling down the cliff face. Then suddenly bursts out over the ocean into the clear. This thing I just had in my hands.
Now we see it as this tiny dot heading toward the horizon, silhouetted against one of these distant islands. And when we finally lose sight of it, our bird is very, very, very far out to sea. As we drive back down from the cliff, I'm so happy. It just can't stop thinking about how that little struggling creature we saved is now sailing out across the freezing water into this whole new life. A life we can't even imagine. And we did that. We fixed that mistake. We literally saved its life.
I'm not sure I've saved anything's life before. I don't think I've been particularly helpful to anything before. And now I'm like a superhero. This is all I want to do. Fortunately, over the next couple of days, puffling season finally starts to pick up. The babies are late, but they are here. And we are catching one after another. You're good at catching pufflings. Oh, thanks. I make sure to give every puffling a name. Puff or notter? Puff and stuff, puff the magic dragon, puffled puff.
I just want to make sure you're okay there. Okay, ready? And then one by one. One, two, three. Release them back to the sea. Before long, I have fallen completely in love with this island and its birds and everything else about it. One evening, I see the most spectacular sunset of my life. And then I turn around and behind me, at the same time, there is a full rainbow arcing across the sky, ending in a volcano. And then that same night, while we're out catching birds, whoa!
We see the northern lights. It's extremely green. And you can see the little red and purple. The sky is overflowing with stars. Very bright. That is very green. Everyone back home hates me. I text a bunch of breathtaking photos and my wife writes back, good for you. And then she sends me a photo of the giant pile of boxes she's packed up to ship to our daughter's dorm room, which is totally fair. But you know what? I'm also very busy. I have my own box to worry about.
And inside it, a little birdie who happens to have an appointment with one of the world's greatest authorities on puffins. We'll meet him in just a minute, after the break. Oh, wait. Here he is. Dr. Airpour Snar Hansen has been tracking the puffin population investment air for over a decade. We meet him at a place downtown called the Puffin Rescue Center, where every puffling season scientists weigh, measure, and tag the baby birds. And we hand him our perfect little puffling.
Right out of the gate, he's a bit of a downer. Dr. Hansen tells us that this year's pufflings were late, which was why it was so hard to find them at first. And they're also dangerously small. And even though our little bird is a little underweight. So we can go and release your friend or you can do it. He offers to help us release it up near some cliffs where he's been conducting puffin research. Oh, these cliffs are really steep. Dr. Hansen takes us up a terrifyingly narrow little sheep trail.
The first puff and hunter, he fell to his death on that slope there down on the edge. But he doesn't seem worried at all about falling. We ever fallen down? Ah, no. I'm still alive. I brought along a six pack of beer because it had puffins on the label. Have a seat. Nothing like a beer in a field. They're flying really close, huh? So close. You think? I love it.
All around us, there are adult puffins popping in and out of their burrows, hopping around in the grass, flying in and out of the water, swooping right over us with beaks full of tiny fish. Is this one? Yeah, just popped out. God, they're so funny. They work so hard to fly. Yeah, they beat their wings by ten hertz, I think. And that's why their energy demands are so high. So costly to fly. They fly like 70, 80 kilometers per hour. That's full speed. See, they're bringing in food like crazy.
Yeah. Wow. Given their circumstances. The circumstances, he tells us, are terrible. He scribbles us this ridiculously complicated map with graphs all over it, showing as far as I can understand it, that basically climate change is changing sea temperatures and shifting the ocean currents. And so there are fewer fish around for puffins to eat. This means that puff and parents have to work much harder to feed their babies. And sometimes they can't feed them at all.
These years, pufflings are late, most likely because they're undernourished. They're not ready to fly yet. So what would happen to, let's say, this puffling most likely is not going to make it. Why not? It's just so way below the weight. And we know the weight is highly linearly correlated with survival. And it's most likely related to they don't have enough power to deal with bad weather, so they're starving and they die, something like that. It seems like a bad time to be a puffin.
No, it's hard times, yeah. This is not a lot normally. Oh no, this is kind of sad actually. I know. You're ruining my magical moment. I know. I'm not there here. Dr. Hansen's ass is hurting. So we head down to the beach to release our bird. Do you want to do it? He doesn't want to throw this puffling. And I'm guessing he wouldn't name it either. We named her Greta after my daughter. It's probably a man. He's probably a man. All right, I do. All right, little girl. All right, little Greta bird.
I mean? Three. Three. Three. Three. Greta the puffling flaps hard and she glides out past the breakers into calmer waters, where we see her land and float and start to swim away. She did it. Yeah. So do you think she'll survive? Yeah, so Buffy has a chance. I mean, she's about to 65. 255, right? Yeah. It's at the lower end, so she's more likely to perish than to life. If I have to make a nasty guess. But you never know. But you never know. And that is the maddening thing about letting go.
You just have to stay in there and watch your precious thing disappear into a future over which you have no control. And you're left holding nothing but the terrifying lightness of your suddenly empty hands. What a nice day. Hi. Hello. Hi again. Bravo. Star hope. It's our last day on the island. And we stop by Tristis House to say goodbye to our island family. I brought two puffing beers. Svava and Sigi have just got enough work and are relaxing in the garden. I don't drink.
You don't drink puffins. You don't drink puffins. I don't drink. Eat puffins. Don't drink. The weather is perfect. It feels more like California than Iceland. And we sit here enjoying the sunshine, watching the sun slide down the sky until it touches the volcano. Cheers to the puffing. Over drinks and snacks, we reminisce about our week, about how I've started to think constantly about my own daughter leaving home. What it means to be a parent and how hard it is to let go.
Svava has five kids and all of them except for Tristis have already left home. What has it been like for you and do you have any advice for me because I have many feelings about it? When Kiskevir get our old display, moved to Reykjavik, 17 years old, I was very, very depressed. My heart was broken for two weeks and then I have to start. He is getting older. He has to go to get out to the life just like we. So you just have to feel the heartbreak? Yes. For two weeks. You live. You live.
Okay. You know, when you have a child, when you have a child the first time, you know right away you don't own it. You just have to take care of it and help them. Do you have one kid? No, I have one. She's our first. Yes. So we have a son who will be there for another few years. Yes. Little Pefflings. Yes. Yes. Yes. But we are always madmented for the 42 years old boy. I sometimes take him and I... I always said, you can change your mother if you don't like me.
Okay. Would you like to have pancakes? Do you have pancakes? He wants pancakes. I would love to have pancakes. If you don't mind. Yes. A coffee or... Siggie sets the table with jams and syrups. We have coffee and we eat way too many pancakes. And then we say goodbye. So make me eat with cheese. We'll see each other again. Yeah. We'll see each other again. Very nice to have you. Very nice to have you. Very nice to meet you. Thank you so much. Very, very cool. Thank you. Good morning.
In the next morning with my bags packed, I board the ferry to leave this magical island and go back to my family in New York. I set up top on the deck because I've brought something from the island with me. You have been the boat? Oh, the puffling. Oh, sweet. Oh my goodness. Yeah, we found him last night. We've rescued him. Yeah, we're going to let it go once we get out to the ocean.
Tristy told me that releasing a puffling at sea was one of the best ways to send a baby bird out into its new life. There's no cliffs, no cats, great chance of survival. Is this a good spot? As we watch the island shrinking into the distance behind us, I take my last puffling out of its box. I raise the bird in my hand. I count to three and one last time I let go. This episode was produced by Caitlin Roberts with the help from Crystal Doohame.
It was reported by me, Sam Anderson, and edited by Wendy Dorr and Larissa Anderson. It was engineered by Marion Luzano. The executive producer is Paula Schuman. Original music by Marion Luzano, Dan Powell, and Pat McCusker. Fact checking by Naomi Sharp. The poem, there once was a puffling, is by Florence Page J. Quees. Thank you to Gail from Nebraska who read it when I was in second grade.
Special thanks to Jake Silverstein and Sasha Weiss, and also to Lynn Levy, Lisa Tobin, Austin Mitchell, Anita Battejo, and Sam Dolenick. And to all of our friends on Vestman Air for spending so much time with us, especially the pufflings. I hope you're all out there swimming around in the deep sea right now and that I will see you again someday back on the cliffs.
Extra special thanks to my wife, Sarah Euselec for packing and shipping all of our daughters belongings to college while I was busy on my dream trip. You can listen to all of our episodes wherever you get podcasts or visit our website at nytimes.com slash animal. And special thanks to the band Maird Kour. RISTY MAR SIGURTHER SON, MEKAL MAGNESON, AND ARNAR ULU SON, who wrote us a worldwide musical exclusive death metal song about catching puffins. It's called puffling. Please enjoy.
You might want to turn the volume down in your headphones right about now. I'm not going to turn the volume down in your headphones right now. I'm not going to turn the volume down in your headphones right now. I'm not going to turn the volume down in your headphones right now. I'm not going to turn the volume down in your headphones right now. I'm not going to turn the volume down in your headphones right now. I'm not going to turn the volume down in your headphones right now.
I'm not going to turn the volume down in your headphones right now. I'm not going to turn the volume down in your headphones right now.