The Hippo

I knew that coming from Hutto, Texas, home of the Hutto Hippos, that my trip to the zoo would be incomplete without seeing the hippos. We had found the cute pygmy hippos. But I wanted to see the full sized ones. I was not confident that I would get a great hippo shot, but I knew I wanted to see them. The hippos have a nice glassed viewing area. But what is special is that you can view the hippo underwater. Now, being tired, we sat and watched the hippo - certainly not his most attractive end . . . . He was asleep, non moving. But the advantages of hanging around an animal worked in our favor. Without warning, he turned around, and swam off to the other end of his pond. This was a marvel to behold. He makes his way through the water like a giant blimp - half walk, half swim, fully submerged locomotion. His movement was remarkably graceful - a slow motion dance. We were lucky enough to watch him sail through the water twice. Didn't I say we were tired . . . . . we hung around a little longer and were rewarded as he hauled himself out of the water. When the hippo is resting with only the top of his head out of the water, you really don't get the full image of how huge he is. When he was totally out of the water, he is a huge rolly polly blob. However, knowing my hippo triva, while he was moving slowly and cumbersomely today, I know that he is actually capable of fast locomotion on ground. These gentle looking giants can be quite fierce. And, amazingly, my underwater-through the glass shot came out better than I expected.