It’s the story of a South American Magellanic penguin who swims 5,000
miles each year to be reunited with the man who saved his life.
Retired bricklayer and part time fisherman Joao Pereira de Souza, 71,
who lives in an island village just outside Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, found the
tiny penguin, covered in oil and close to death, lying on rocks on his local
beach in 2011.
Joao cleaned the oil off the penguin’s feathers and fed him a daily diet
of fish to build his strength. He named him Dindim.
After a week, he tried to release the penguin back into the sea. But,
the bird wouldn’t leave. ‘He stayed with me for 11 months and then, just after
he changed his coat with new feathers, he disappeared,’ Joao recalls.
And, just a few months later, Dindim was back. He spotted the fisherman
on the beach one day and followed him home.
For the past five years, Dindim has spent eight months of the year with
Joao and is believed to spend the rest of the time breeding off the coast of
Argentina and Chile.
‘I love the penguin like it’s my own child and I believe the penguin
loves me,’ Joao told Globo TV. ‘No one else is allowed to touch him. He pecks
them if they do. He lays on my lap, lets me give him showers, allows me to feed
him sardines and to pick him up.
‘Everyone said he wouldn’t return but he has been coming back to visit
me for the past four years. He arrives in June and leaves to go home in
February and every year he becomes more affectionate as he appears even happier
to see me.’
Biologist Professor Krajewski, who interviewed the fisherman for Globo
TV, told The Independent: ‘I have never seen anything like this before. I think
the penguin believes Joao is part of his family and probably a penguin as well.
‘When he sees him he wags his tail like a dog and honks with delight.
And, just like that, the world seems a kinder place again.
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