Not to be confused with Hoots—his grotesquely obese drunken Scottish brother—Hooter is the hilariously-named giant owl who has a bizarre fixation with hoop-based athletics.

Hooter's originally from Timber's Island, which is probably where he got that stupid jogging outfit. He used to have hours of fun trying to persuade the local racing obsessives to fly through his special hoopy-hoop courses (with varying degrees of success) but the fun was seemingly over when the island was invaded by a colossal space pig with litte-to-no interest in hoop-oriented amusement.

So he relocated to Fungi Forest, a surreal locale where—presumably due to some kind of celestial administrative error—time didn't really work properly. Even so, Hooter felt its general lack of space pig invaders was a distinct advantage for the discerning owl homemaker.

One night (at least he thought it was the night; it was always hard to tell) he was awoken by a short, hat-wearing monkey. Hooter didn't think much of Diddy Kong (that's who it was!) at first, but was impressed moments later when he flew up to Hooter in his special Jet Barrels. "I'll do my hoopy hoop thing" Hooter thought, "It'll be just like old times!"

Diddy decided to humour his owly challenger and completed the hoop course fairly quickly. Hooter got a bang out of it and decided to give him a magical barrel he'd found lying around as a reward. Then he went back to sleep, because he was a fucking owl and he could do whatever he liked (Donkey Kong 64).

As for Hoots, his kilt-wearing bagpipe-tooting counterpart: well, he's never been seen in public. In fact, some people are beginning to suspect he was just made up by me.