Read the comments section for an update on Owen and Mzee.
It started out as a cute story in the wake of a horrible tragedy. A baby hippo (and by baby, I mean all 650 pounds of him) was separated from his mother after the Tsunami of 2004. After being rescued by wildlife works and relocated to the Haller Sanctuary in Kenya, Owen the Hippo befriended a 130 year-old Aldabra tortoise named Mzee (which means “old man” in Swahili). The two swan together, ate together, and napped together. It had all the great makings of a buddy story. And that’s just what it became.
You can catch the adventures of Owen and Mzee in a bookstore near you (or click here to read the whole book in PDR form courtesy of NPR). The pair even has its own website, owenandmzee.com (of course they do)! All the wild animals are getting online these days. I’m sure you can add them as your Facebook or MySpace buddies, too.
What the story doesn’t tell you is that Owen’s now ginormous and can’t hang with Mzee anymore because the male hippo would probably crush his old buddy. It’s all fun and games until you accidentally flatten your best friend.
In fact, rumors are that Mzee ran off with some female trollop named Cleo (like Cleopatra, who had lots and lots of lovers). I’ve been searching for an update on the two, but it seems like the big media is trying to keep it on the down-low. I imagine the marketing of Owen and Mzee could be greatly undermined if the public learned the two no longer hang together. It’s all about image, right?
I know it’s for the best given the size and weight of Owen; it’s just sad the two survivors had to move on with their lives. The weblog that is supposed to update the public on the daily activities of the two doesn’t seem to work for me. If anyone has an update, please let me know.
It goes to show that the promise of love separates all great duos. Or maybe I’m just bitter because Valentine’s Day is a’coming and I’m single. One really can be the loneliest number.
But, hey, a giant tortoise and a baby hippo do make an unlikely pair, don’t they? I love how God has created His world to be ordered, and then sometimes, for some reason, an anomaly like this happens. It causes me to marvel at God all the more because He chose to bring Owen and Mzee together–even if their time has come to an end.
And what’s weird about these animals is that they do what we humans seem to find so difficult to do–they go outside the boundaries of what is normal, instinctual even, and form bonds with one another. Whether out of necessity or not, why can animals get it right? The law of the jungle is to each your neighbor, but every so often animals defy logic, defy their nature, and come together. Yet even though we are fallen, we find it difficult to get along with those in our church (our same species) much less the other people around us.
Maybe we need to be more like an old tortoise and adopt a wild, young hippo that needed a friend. Our society needs stories like this, not just because they’re cute, but because they serve as examples of what God can teach us, even though animals (like Baalam’s donkey).
A couple of years ago I blogged about another unlikely pair–a lioness who adopted an antelope. Read about it here. And here’s another blog entry about a dog who rescued a baby, click here. I’m all about heart-warming animal stories.
Tags: adopt, africa, antelope, baby, baby hippopatamus, care, cleo, dog, haller sanctuary, hippo, kenya, lioness, mzee, owen, rescue, tortoise, tsunami
I have an update on Owen and Mzee. In march of 2007 Cleo, (the hippo that Owen and Mzee took up residence with) started bullying one of the other tortoises in the enclosure. When they pulled him out he had bruises and marks all over from the rough treatment so as a precaution they took Mzee out of the enclosure and put him back in his old enclosure with Toto a female Aldabran tortoise. The public had been writing the man who took care of them asking when he would be returned and he responded saying that they will not be reunited as Owen is doing well with Cleo and finally acting as a hippopotamus should and even if they were to reunite the two they have both grown accustomed to being seperated and they are not sure they would even have the same reaction to one another. Very Sad in my opinion
Toto became the 3rd member of their family when Mzee was removed for health reasons (before Cleo was in the picture). I’m glad she & Mzee are together, if he & Owen must be parted.
Just one more note: as a historian, I must say that Cleopatra had fewer lovers than a lot of teenagers i know. And she was married to most of them.
I, too, am humbled at how God uses animals to teach us, who fancy ourselves superior (despite much evidence to the contrary).