The number twelve car zoomed ahead, barely an inch past the second car. The checkered flag flew triumphantly. Number twelve had won! Excited squawks and chirps echoed across the track, causing many in the stands to look around in puzzlement. It sounded like the zoo a mile away had lost some of its animals or something.

Inside the car, the air was hot and thick. Lady Penguin chirped with glee as she spun across the grass in victory figure-eights. This was incredible. Unprecedented. Nobody had realized that she'd traded places with the original driver (although how they'd missed her feathers, flippers, and beak, she wasn't quite sure--still, she wasn't going to look a gift fish in the mouth). And she'd made it. What would the sour-beaks back home say now? she thought triumphantly. She'd done what no other penguin had done before. It didn't matter if the humans accepted it or not, although she did have an advocate up in the stands.

As she slowed the car to a stop, Lady awkwardly pulled her feathery body out of the driver's side window. That was the only uncomfortable thing, really. The suit was all right, and the helmet. But penguin's bodies weren't really made to go through windows!

"And here's the winner now!" an enthusiastic, bespectacled reporter said now, sticking a microphone in her beak. "How do you feel, Ms. Wilson?"

Lady pulled off her helmet with a squawk of relief, and the reporter's mouth dropped open, shock rounding her eyes.

"It's Lady Penguin, ma'am," she said in slightly accented English. "I'm terribly sorry, but Ms. Wilson agreed to trade places with me. She's back in the garage now." Although she wouldn't be surprised if the woman had sneaked out to watch the race and see how she did.

"What...how...what?" the reporter spluttered.

"I am awfully short for Regina Wilson, don't you think?" Lady chided gently. The reporter blushed.

"Well, yes, but..."

"Penguins can do whatever they set their minds to," Lady said in a prim chirp. She began to waddle off the track with her head held high. As the spectators watched the little Adelie penguin go, still clad in her racing uniform (although she'd immediately pulled the gloves off her flippers), they all stood and began to applaud.

No matter what the officials said, Lady Penguin was a winner.