You landwalkers call our mostly aquatic planet Earth. Your record-keeping is similarly questionable. This month, I am introducing you to some of the creatures you seem to have misplaced.

Today, let’s talk about the Aukiris — Aukiris frigidorum. Some centuries ago, a colony of auks looked at the sky, looked at the water, and made a decision the rest of us have been quietly admiring ever since. The wings did not disappear. They simply retired from flying and took up a more practical line of work.

Landwalker ornithologists prefer to call it a very committed penguin. I find this forgivable, if a little insulting on the Aukiris’s behalf — the two are not related, and Aukiris, I promise you, has opinions about the comparison. What were once wings are paddles now, oiled and thickened, with a faint feathered fringe still clinging to the edges, the way an old accent lingers after the rest of the sentence has changed countries. On land, it walks like it’s being made to. It has never once apologized for this.

It hunts small fish in short, businesslike dives — no flourish, no wasted motion, the approach of a creature that has never had time for anyone’s applause. It nests exactly at the waterline, because anywhere else would simply be an inconvenience it declines to accept. Its call, when it bothers, is brief. Aukiris has never been a great conversationalist, and has made peace with that.

Sailors once logged the sightings as penguins, wildly lost, and I understand the impulse — though I’d gently suggest that assuming an animal has lost its way is usually easier than admitting it knew exactly where it was going. Others preferred a curse: a bird punished, caught eternally between sky and sea. Romantic. Also incorrect. Aukiris made its choice generations ago, and has spent every generation since looking rather pleased about it.

Evolution, I’ve found, rarely finishes what it starts. Sometimes it simply stops, mid-sentence, and calls the fragment a whole animal. Aukiris is, by most standards, unfinished. It has never once found that to be anyone’s business but its own.

Ignorance drowns. Wisdom swims. Remember to check out the megafeed at  DogDaysOfPodcasting.com to hear everyone participating and visit BathtubMermaid.com  to listen to this episode. Keep swimming and resist.