Joao Pereira de Souza found him lying on the sand, covered in oil and too weak to move.
It was May 2011, in Rio de Janeiro, and that 71-year-old retired fisherman did not hesitate: he cleaned the penguin with his own hands, day after day, until it was able to return to the sea. He named him Dindim, because his young grandson could not pronounce the word penguin properly.
What no one expected was that Dindim would not forget. Every year, he arrives alone at the same beach on Ilha Grande and finds the exact yard of Joao’s house. He stays from June to February, and biologist Joao Paulo Krajewski, who documented the reunion, said that he once saw him gently touch Joao’s face with his beak, as if he were recognizing him. He has been making that journey for more than a decade just to return to him.
