Coleridge the Albatross

Coleridge the Albatross is a friendly seabird who crashes into the mast of the Queen Mabel, the Muppets' cruise ship, in the 1980 comic book Muppets at Sea. Coleridge wears a naval hat, a monocle, and a red and black striped necktie. He speaks in a potted upper-class British slang.

In the book, Gonzo takes off on his own in a pot, pretending to be a pirate, and the Muppets lose sight of him. Worried, they shovel coal into the furnace and search for the missing Gonzo. A passing albatross loses his way in the smoke and smacks into the mast, falling to the deck in a heap. "Dashed silly place to put a post, old bean," he remarks as he dusts himself off.

Dr. Bob and Nurse Janice patch up Coleridge's bruised beak, and the grateful bird offers to search for Gonzo from the air. He returns at the end of the book with his friend, Commander Melville, a pink whale who's carrying Gonzo in his mouth.

At the end of the book, Kermit reveals that Coleridge took up an offer to join Gonzo's act, and returned to the Muppet Theater with the rest of the gang. "I suppose Gonzo always needed someone to play spoons while he threaded a needle," Kermit writes in his captain's log, "and the albatross isn't half bad."

Reference

Coleridge's name is a reference to the English poet Samuel Coleridge, whose 1797 poem The Rime of the Ancient Mariner presents an albatross in a somewhat more sinister light, as an omen of doom.