Clerkie, also mistakenly known as Clerkly, is presumably an anthropomorphic hybrid of dognose and cockatoo.
Description[]
Clerkie is one of the clerks who work at Scrooge McDuck's Money Bin. Visibly tired and worried by his boss's constant eccentricities, Clerkie is nonetheless a very resourceful man, and has, more than once, gotten him out of tight fixes.
Physical Appearance[]
Clerkie appears to be a hybrid of some kind: he has dognose-like body (including dog ears), but also a crooked beak. Depending on the coloring, he can either have humanlike/dognoselike skin, or have white feathers like Gyro Gearloose. Although it is almost certain that one of the two species mixed is the dognose, whether the 'bird' aspects come from a cockatoo, a rooster, a parrot or some other species remains unknown.
Behind the scenes[]
Created in 1963 by Vic Lockman and Carl Barks in The Invisible Intruder, Clerkie was also used by Don Rosa in two stories, Nobody's Business and Last Sled to Dawson. Don Rosa never used him again afterwards, due to disliking hybrid characters like him. Interestingly, in Nobody's Business, Don Rosa has Scrooge McDuck refer to Clerkie as "Clerkly", the name of another recurring clerk of Scrooge's. Whether this was a real mistake, or a conscious misnaming meant to convey Scrooge's stressed state at that point, is unknown.