Just Like an Animal

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The Friday Morning Story

February 25, 2005

* Just Like an Animal *

From the December 26th tsunami which was such a chilling disaster of extreme magnitude comes this heartwarming story.

After tsunami waves struck the Kenyan coast and pushed up the Sabaki River, a baby hippopotamus living in the river with its mother was then swept back down the river into the Indian Ocean. He was returned to shore by following tsunami waves. Wildlife rangers rescued him after he was found alone and dehydrated.

The baby hippopotamus, nicknamed "Owen" and weighing 650 pounds, was then placed in a wildlife sanctuary called Lafarge Park in the port city of Mombase. Soon he formed a strong bond with a giant male century-old tortoise.

"It is incredible. A-less-than-a-year-old hippo has adopted a male tortoise about a century old, and the tortoise seems to be very happy with being a 'mother'," said ecologist Paula Kahumbu who is the park manager.

"The tortoise is named Mzee, which is Swahili for old man, and the hippo follows the tortoise around and licks his face exactly the way it would follow its mother. If somebody approaches the tortoise, the hippo becomes aggressive, as if protecting its biological mother. They sleep together, eat together and have become inseparable," Kahumbu continued to say.

"The hippo is a young baby, he was left at a very tender age and by nature, hippos are social animals that like to stay with their mothers for four years. If the hippo and tortoise continued to thrive then in the next few weeks we will allow the public to see the unlikely pair together."

When I was growing up and we were especially mean to someone else, it would be said that we were acting "just like an animal."

I do not hear that expression as much anymore. Perhaps we humans have begun to realize that examples of kindness and care can come as much from the animal world as from the human world.

What? You say I am "just like an animal"? Well, thank you. I appreciate that.

~ by C. F. Sandy Pofahl ~