Penguin swims miles every year to meet the man who saved it

RIO: You might have heard many heartwarming reunion stories, but this one, revolving around a South American Magellanic penguin and a man, will surely make your day. This penguin swims 5,000 miles every year to reunite with the man who saved his life.
Joao Pereira de Souza, 71, who is a part-time fisherman and retired bricklayer, lives in a village located outside Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. In 2011, he found a tiny penguin, in very critical condition, covered in oil, lying on a rock, almost close to his death.
Joao took him under his protection. He cleaned the oil from his body and started feeding him fish everyday. Joao named him Dindim, reports Mirror.UK.
When Dindim was healthy, Joao tried to release him back into the sea, but Dindim decided to stay with him.
“He stayed with me for 11 months and then, just after he changed his coat with new feathers, he disappeared,” Joao recalls.
Dindim was back after few months and for 5 years he has been spending 8 months of the year with Joao.
It’s believed that the penguin spends rest of the time breeding off the coast of Chile and Argentina. And it’s amazing to see how he swims 5,000 miles every year to meet the man who once saved his life.
"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," Joao told Globo TV.
Every year he comes to Joao in June and leaves in February.