Sir Nils the Penguin is Promoted to Brigadier

Some years ago the King of Norway loaned a penguin to the Edinburgh Zoo and, for kicks, also knighted him. Now whenever King Harald V swings by to visit Scotland on vacation, he promotes the damned bird again. Over the years Sir Nils Olav has gone from a knight to a personal member of the kings guard. This week he was promoted to Brigadier. That means a Norwegian bird outranks every corporal in the Norwegian Army. (We can read a lot into how seriously our Norwegian allies take national security by the fact that three or four strategically targeted scud missiles would leave a flightless bird at the top of their chain of command.) Generally my whimsical nature makes me enjoy this sort of oddity, but Sir Nils irritates me deeply. It’s bad enough seeing the comedians my age who’ve surpassed my own meager success to become millionaire humor deities; I don’t like that a bird who can’t even figure out how to fly has a more impressive resume than I do. At one point the Polish Army literally made a Nazi-fighting bear an officer, but I can respect that, because the bear participated in combat.

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