In case you’ve missed it, the Monterey Bay Aquarium has spent this entire week running An Extremely Important Voter’s Poll to name the newest puffling in its tufted puffin colony. (You get a pass for not voting so long as you don’t judge me for spending a large portion of my adult life participating in things like this.) The new puffling arrived July 26, and is being reared by tufted Puffin parents named Pickle and Yarrow.

When the contest began on Monday, aquarium fans were asked to choose between the names Yali, Aster, Alca, Miki, Squash and Sprout. Unlike the naming vote for UC Berkeley‘s campanile falcon chicks, no explanation was offered as to why these names made the aquarium’s shortlist. Googling didn’t help much either. (Try finding one definitive meaning to the word “Yali,” I dar

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