INTRODUCING MY HIPPOS

While I was a docent at the Honolulu Zoo, the hippos was one of my favorite stations. When I started, "Rosie" was 2 years old, and "Weezie" (Louise) was introduced to the group as a 6 mo old baby. They are now 16 and 17. We had our Annual Meeting tonight, and were treated to a behind the scenes tour, including the hippo sleeping quarters. The 1st pic shows Rosie yawning (we woke her up). In the 2nd pic, she has put her chin against the bars to have it scratched. No one did... they were scared.

Just after I took the 2nd pic, I called her name, and she came right over to me, looked at me and presented her chin for a scratch, which of course, I DID! BIG BABY! I swear she remembered me. I use to sit by the underwater window in her exhibit and eat my lunch. She would come over an "put her head in my lap" or so it seemed.. talked ot her all the time, and she knew my waha nui!

If you're ever in Honolulu, be sure to check out or zoo... it has a great African exhibit.. all natural habitat, and we are now working on an Asian exhibit... so we can breed our Sumatran tigers and Indian elephants.

Malama pono A Hui Hou

____________________________

http://www.myspace.com/nuts4africa

http://www.youtube.com/user/Emjay620

Great story Emjay, you should tell us more about your adventures at the zoo.

thanks for the pics and story Emjay.

that must have been nice for you to see them again after such a long time.

Just curious, what does this mean ? Smiling Malama pono A Hui Hou

____________________________

Sounds of Nkorho Support africam

Malama pono a hui hou means.. take care until we meet again!I'm seriously thinking of going back to do more volunteer work at the zoo... spending too much time on the computer! Smiling

____________________________

http://www.myspace.com/nuts4africa

http://www.youtube.com/user/Emjay620

I forgot to tell you that our SENIOR hippo, Cleo, is now 50 years old.. supposedly the oldest hippo in captivity! The normal life expectancy in a zoo is 35. Life expectancy in Hawaii is HIGH! She use to harass the 2 youngsters when they were small, so now they harass her, and are never put on display at the same time. As you can imagine, Cleo is HUGE! She goes out to the pool at night, when the "kids" are in the sleeping quarters, so you have to be there early in the morning to catch a glimpse of the poor old girl!

____________________________

http://www.myspace.com/nuts4africa

http://www.youtube.com/user/Emjay620

I would love to be a docent at a decent zoo but there is nothing here in Vancouver. If I had life to do all over again, I would have been a zookeeper. I worked in a petting zoo for thirteen years, which was wonderful, but wild animals would be waaaaay cool.

I tried to include a fun hippo picture but I don't know what the URL would be.

Select your preferred way to display the comments and click "Save settings" to activate your changes.

32362 users, 8377 topics and 577120 replies so far.

Members Online

INTRODUCING MY HIPPOS

Comment viewing options