What does the ASCII art in /etc/motd represent?

[nurbles]

I'm just curious what the image in the motd shown below is intended to be, if anything. Or did someone building TC just think it looked "neat"?  Again, just idle curiosity...   

[never mind, trying to past in the actual motd text causes the forum to reject the post with an internal error  Sigh.  ]

[curaga]

The bird? I think you can find the original discussions from ages ago on the forum, it's intended to be a penguin but to some it looks like an owl haha.