Birdie.

I created Birdie's face facing forward because that's what works well on a t-shirt and reads from a distance. But what made me love him isn't visible in the portrait: that habit of his, counting. He goes along with his finger, quietly, without anyone noticing —one, two, three, this one, that one, the one in the hat— and if someone slips past him, he starts over. He can't settle until he knows how many there are and that everyone's present. He doesn't do it because anyone told him to, or as some silly game: he counts, over and over, simply so that no one is missing.

There's something fitting about him spending his days counting heads on dry land, because the emperor penguin is, of every bird in the world, the one that ventures furthest from the air. To fish, it dives more than half a kilometre under the sea, into a darkness and pressure where almost nothing breathes, and stays down whole minutes on a single breath. No other bird goes that deep or stays down that long. I like the distance between the two: a record-breaking diver whose only worry, on land, is not losing count of anyone on the platform.