So when attempts are made to spice things up, it's mainly done with another female animal of same species, mainly Mickey Mouse in drag, and can be problematic if the chemistry doesn't work.
Interestingly enough, Kermit and Miss Piggy are the most well-known interspecies romance, despite the two not having a very stable relationship.
Helga's pet, Kvack the duck is little more than a foil for Hagar's activities, and with her stuck-up attitude, doesn't seem like the kind of thing who'd be subject to romance.
But cartoonists don't let little things like logic get in the way of such things. Otherwise there wouldn't be anachronistic vikings or talking funny animals.
All of this is a long-winded way of getting to the relevant comic in question:
I was sure this was a one-off, since it showed up once, and was never referenced again, but while browsing newspaper archives, I came across this:
At the time, I thought there would be more, expanding on the joke, but sadly, this seems to be an aberration, and this one-sided romance ended the way it began. But it turns out this wasn't the only instance of a bird falling in love with an artificially created idealistic version of itself:
That's right - there was a penguin who was enamored with a humanoid version of a penguin. Furries may get a bad rap for identifying more like an anthropomorphic animal they're infatuated with, but it turns out they're not unique in that regard.
Now, a little personal fun fact: growing up, I was somewhat unusual in the way I absorbed information. I loved apple juice, but had trouble making my needs known. As a way of trying to teach me, my mother would cut out grocery junk mail food items and paste them in a lined notebook for easy viewing. I would be indifferent in the presence of an actual hamburger. But if I was shown a cutout of a hamburger, I would get all excited. I was already in the thrall of 2-dimensional objects before that became a thing.
