Nyla

"earth"

- My shirshu can smell a rat a continent away.

Nyla was a male shirshu who served as the mount and constant companion of the bounty hunter June. June acquired Nyla from her father when he received it as payment for a bounty he had collected while working for a rare animal collector. Nyla and June had been together for over seventeen years. Like other shirshus, Nyla's tongue contained poisonous neurotoxins that could temporarily paralyze a human being.

History
In one of June's missions, Nyla tracked a bounty stowed away on Zuko's ship. He bit into the metal deck, tearing a large piece out to reveal the stowaway. Zuko hired June to track down the Avatar using the shirshu. When Zuko tracked and attacked Aang, Nyla fought Appa and paralyzed him with his tongue, although it took several hits to bring the flying bison down. Katara defeated Nyla by confusing him with perfume which she bent out of pots in the abbey. Nyla 'blindly' lashed out and paralyzed Zuko and June successively before running away.

Months later, when Aang went missing, Zuko and Team Avatar traveled to the Earth Kingdom, where they found June in a tavern. Outside, Nyla and Appa seemed to have befriended each other. Katara handed Aang's staff to June so the shirshu could sniff it. He turned in circles then covered his nose, unable to find Aang. Zuko then decided to track down Iroh instead, and he handed June his uncle's sandal. Nyla sniffed it then led them to the walls of Ba Sing Se where he and June then left them.

Trivia

 * When Zuko held Katara's necklace in front of Nyla's powerful nose, Nyla lashed out with his poisonous tongue. Then June remarked, "oh look, he likes you", but showed no affection toward Nyla in the least, treating him more like a tool than an animal. This is mainly because she was on a job and took her payments seriously. However, in June's reappearance, her shirshu had a name, and June even pet her shirshu and referred to Nyla as her "Snuffly-Wuffly", though she was wary of Nyla's venomous tongue as he showed June affection.
 * According to Avatar Extras, Nyla was named after the pet dog one of the writers owned.
 * Nyla appeared briefly in the animated short "School Time Shipping" along with a few other familiar creatures.
 * Nyla is able to track scents that are hundreds of miles away.