The bird was starving and covered in oil. It could barely move.
João, a retired bricklayer and part-time fisherman, took him in. He washed the oil off his feathers and fed him sardines until he grew strong again.
His little grandson couldn’t say “pinguim,” the Portuguese word for penguin. It came out “Dindim.” The name stuck.
When Dindim was healthy, João took him out to sea and set him free. But later that day, he heard squeaking in his backyard. The penguin had come back, and he was calling for him.
Dindim stayed for months. Then one day in February, after he grew his new feathers, he was gone.
Everyone told João the penguin wouldn’t return. But that June, João heard a loud squeak in his yard again. Dindim was back.
And he has kept coming back. “He arrives in June and leaves to go home in February,” João said in 2016, “and every year he becomes more affectionate, as he appears even happier to see me.”
Dindim won’t let anyone else touch him. He pecks them or waddles away. But he lets João pick him up, give him showers and feed him sardines.
“I love the penguin like it’s my own child,” João told Brazil’s TV Globo. “And I believe the penguin loves me.”
Some stories online claimed Dindim swims thousands of miles to see him. The biologist who filmed them says that is unlikely. But it doesn’t really matter how far he swims. What matters is that he always finds his way back.
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