Picky Penguin Has Love Affair with Zookeeper

'She Completely Wrote Me Off'

During the filming of a movie with Sandy in 2006, Vollbracht got sick and had to stay home from work for six weeks. But when he finally returned to the zoo, Sandy had found someone else. "If their partner is gone for a few weeks," Vollbracht says of these primarily monogamous birds, "they go back out on a partner hunt."

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"After 10 years of having her on my arm," Vollbracht says with a wistful sigh, "she'd completely written me off." Sandy was now with Tom, a much younger penguin. "At the beginning," Vollbracht says, "it was weird. But, when all's said and done, it was better for her to lead a normal penguin life."

And that's exactly what she did. In 2008, after a few mating seasons of near misses, Tom and Sandy eventually started a family of their own with two chicks. But this September, Tom died of a bacterial infection. Since raising two chicks was "too much for her to handle on her own," they were placed in a foster nest. And Sandy was single again.

"After Tom died," Vollbracht says, "I came back to work from vacation, and it was like she'd flipped a switch. She was looking for someone, and I was there."

Now Sandy and Vollbracht are back together again and pleasing the crowds with their daily shows of affection. For Vollbracht, who has a wife and two children of his own to worry about, it's a bittersweet reunion. "It's nice for the zoo and to be followed around again," he says, "but I can't stay her partner forever." But finding her someone else might not be so easy, either. "We can't find her a partner," Vollbracht says. "She chooses, and it's her decision or nothing."