Karoo

Reaching about the height of a typical person, this bird wears yellow-brown feathering, with wings and tail that darken to black at their ends. A black stripe across the bill identifies his species, and rather than webbed feet he stands on four-toed talons reminiscent of an ostrich. He commonly turns out in a blue-and-white chullo worn unbuckled, pink goggles, and a saddle laden with packs. For travel he hangs a barrel canteen, drinking straw and all, around his neck.

Cast mainly as comic relief, Karoo grasps human talk and circumstances well enough, yet his behavior can veer into the odd or the slow, and he occasionally fumbles even Vivi's simplest orders. The hint of peril makes him cower or flee, a skittishness that balances his bold owner. That timidity always gives way to loyalty, though. He has flung his own body before stampeding horses to protect Vivi, clawed Luffy out from under a mountain, and pitched into the struggle against Baroque Works whenever his friends required it. Attached to the Straw Hats, he wept when they parted. With no one watching, a greedy side surfaces, and he gulps down water Vivi told him to save.

Younger than Vivi by only a couple of years, Karoo has accompanied her since her childhood and eventually rose to head an elite flock of riding birds, a unit named Super Spot-Billed Duck Troops, kept by the Nefertari royals for special duties. When Vivi went undercover in Baroque Works as Miss Wednesday, he served as her battle-mount. Across Whisky Peak, Little Garden, Drum Island, and Arabasta itself, he stood with the Straw Hats, raced Vivi's warning letter through the desert to Alubarna, and summoned his whole troop to the crew's aid. He weathered both a horse stampede and a gunshot while shielding his mistress, then healed in time for the kingdom's celebratory banquet and the crew's tearful goodbye. In the years that follow he assembles a scrapbook of the Straw Hats' newspaper exploits, travels to Levely with the royal family, and mourns once he and Vivi are separated after that gathering.