From Antarctica, the hunter returns with a gift for his partner: a stuffed penguin. He had killed it there, on the ice of the South Pole, leaving his penguin companion a widow and the chick she had hatched an orphan. The beast is now proudly displayed on a shelf in their home, where tables and chairs continue to inexplicably fall, while in Antarctica the ice is collapsing, melting due to rising global temperatures. As the climate changes, so that murdered little creature irreparably changes the rapport between the man and his wife, in a relationship that proves impossible, until she decides to set things right.