By Dr. Robert Thorson

‘Twas the day after Christmas,

When all through the house

The muse of this columnist

Was as dead as a trapped mouse.

The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,

The polar bear, tin soldier and bear …

Wait a minute! What in winter wonderland is a penguin doing there with all those North Pole/Santa’s workshop characters — and under my very own roof, no less?

Most years, my pet peeve about penguins wouldn’t be a problem. But this year, the surprise natural history blockbuster “March of the Penguins” set the stage for an increase in the number of irritating hemispheric mix-ups during the holiday season. So, when I saw the new penguin stocking hanging out with the polar bear one on my fireplace, I thought, “Don’t get mad, get even.” My writer’s muse lit up like a Christmas candle.

Let’s get something straight. Penguins are not native to the Northern Hemisphere. They do not coexist with polar bears. They do not understand land predators. Hey, a polar bear could walk right up to a flock, sit down and eat them like a bowl of oily black-and- white olives. To repeat myself: The bird is Antarctic, the bear is Arctic. Never the twain shall meet.

Why does the bad match between penguins and polar bears infect the popular mindset like a virus inside a computer? Perhaps it’s nothing more than plain old-fashioned ignorance. But I have a halfbaked conspiracy theory that just might be true.

I call it my “politically correct revisionist global homogenization” theory.

The global homogenization part is easiest to explain. It’s a Noah’s Ark sort of thing in which all the animals are happily brought together in one place to celebrate wishful thinking about biodiversity. The animated movie “Madagascar” is typical of this trend: Animals endemic to different land masses — penguins, lemurs, a giraffe — are brought together as friends in a place where they wouldn’t naturally co-exist.

In the real world, however, when a species invades a new land, destruction begins: Easy prey is eaten, sometimes to extinction, and a new order is established.

Were polar bears and penguins actually brought together in one place, the likely result would be zero penguins, or a shift in the behavior of the penguin population away from traits we find so endearing. What works in a zoo does not translate to the real world. “Don’t worry, be happy” is not a theme song for field ecology.

The politically correct revisionist part of my theory is more complex. Rewriting history is popular in academia these days. So, for a moment, let’s return to the era of global European exploration and conquest between the 15th and 19th centuries.

Polaris, the North Star, was not only the most critical reference point for navigation, it was also near the top of the field of view. Hence, it made sense for cartographers to draw north at the top of their maps.

This completely arbitrary convention became the global standard. Ever since then, southern lands have been drawn near the bottom of most maps. Thus was born the Southern Hemisphere’s geographic inferiority complex.

If map-making had begun in the Southern Hemisphere, everything would now be different. Antarctica would be at the top, the Arctic at the bottom. Australia would visually dominate over Siberia. Los Angeles would be to the right of New York. On a desktop globe, the United States would be in shadow.

In the modern game of global positioning satellites, we do not have the luxury of taking turns being on top of the map. So, perhaps the rise in penguin power is a secret conspiracy by the likes of Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez and Bolivia’s Evo Morales to draw a little attention to the Southern Hemisphere.

As the year closes, let’s resolve two things:

Never mix penguins with polar bears.

And never believe that north is better than south, just because it’s on top.