Here is a heartwarming story from a beach in Brazil.
This is a story about a penguin of South Magellanic who swims 5000 miles each day to be reunited with the man who saved his life.
A tiny penguin, which is covered in oil and close to death, lying on rocks on a local beach in 2011 was found by a retired bricklayer and part-time fisherman Joao Pereira de Souza, 71, who lives in an island village just outside Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
He saved the penguin by cleaning the oil off its feathers and fed a daily diet of fish to make him strong. The penguin was named as Dindim by him.
After a week, even though he released the penguin back to the sea, it wouldn’t leave him. Joao said that ‘He stayed with me for 11 months and then, just after he changed his coat with new feathers, he disappeared.’
After a few months Dindim spotted the fisherman on the beach and followed him home.
Dindim has spent eight months from twelve with Joao for the past five years and spend the other four months breeding off the coast of Argentina and Chile.
It’s like he swims 5000 miles to be reunited with Joao.
Joao told Globo TV that, ‘I love the penguin like it’s my own child and I believe the penguin loves me,’
‘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.’
‘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.’ said Biologist Professor Krajewski to The Independent, who interviewed the fisherman for Globo TV.
And the world seems a kinder place again, just like it.
the source used: metro.co.uk