"Along Colombia’s main river, fishing nets once filled with catfish are coming up emptier — replaced by the wake of churning beasts that shouldn’t be there."

"Fishermen are terrified to cast their hooks at night. 'They’ve changed our lifestyle,' said Giovanny Contreras, a fisherman, as he navigated his boat past the bulbous eyes of a male hippo peering at him.... It began as a drug lord’s whim: four hippos that Pablo Escobar brought as exotic pets for his sprawling estate in the 1980s. Now an unruly herd has bedeviled Colombia for decades...."

From "The Fight to Euthanize Pablo Escobar’s Hippos in Colombia/Colombia is planning to cull a population of wild hippos, the offspring of the drug lord’s pets, dividing a town where hippos are the main draw" (NYT).

It sounds easy. Kill them all. It's an invasive species — dangerous and damaging — and huge.

But no: "The hippos have long lent a touch of magical realism to daily life in Doradal. Visitors are greeted by kitschy hippo statues, locals offer hippo-watching tours and some residents have reportedly stolen baby hippos to try to breed them as pets. Many residents regard the beasts with a mix of pride, pity and prudence...."

Magical realism? The literary style? Is this related to "One Hundred Years of Solitude"? Would that be about attracting tourists to Colombia — readers who romanticize the destination and can be drawn into thinking they can see something dreamlike here — or is it about some kind of genuine culture of incorporating amazing new things into the traditional world?

"In the 1980s, Escobar decided to make his own personal zoo on his palatial estate in Antioquia, Colombia, illegally importing... four hippos."

"When Escobar died in 1993, the government removed the animals to zoos and wildlife sanctuaries. Wrangling the grumpy hippos, however, proved too big a task. So there they remained without any natural predators, ready to breed like crazy. Today, Escobar’s herd has grown to upward of 100 strong. To residents, they are a threatening menace, but among scientists their presence is the source of spirited debate. Are Escobar’s hippos 'invasive'? Or are they 'introduced'? Are they threatening the local ecological community? Or are they helping to 'rewild' the area? The answer is far from clear, but the debate could change the way we think about preserving habitats.... [Hippos graze on land and] defecate in the water... and many scientists worry they could dramatically affect the ecosystem.... [But] South America was once home to many large herbivores, including a semiaquatic rhino-like creature known as a notoungulate. It was also home to the giant llama, which was similarly responsible for grazing and nutrient recycling in the ecosystem. But those megafauna disappeared thousands of years ago, largely thanks to humans.... 'We should be interrogating our conception of nature,' said Erick Lundgren, lead author of [a] study. For Lundgren, the point is not to say that hippos 'belong' in South America but to recognize that 'belonging' is a values-based concept created by humans.... Human intervention may make conservationists uncomfortable, but given the scale of our biodiversity crisis, it seems foolish to dismiss a tool that could help."

From "The great conundrum of Pablo Escobar’s hippos" (WaPo). A lot going on in that article, not much reflection. It seems foolish to dismiss a tool that could help... that's an inane way to sum up a problem! Yes, it's "foolish" not to give something any thought at all, but that's saying just about nothing. The comments over there are all over the place — some in the childish "I love hippos" category, some saying what about the poor people who live there, and others dragging Trump into it (as if life is a matter of: First person to make a Trump wisecrack wins).

"There's really no point in risking injury, if the result of a fight is predictable."

I'm quoting Sir David Attenborough, transcribed from a video at "When a hippo is angry, even other hippos get out of the way/Hippos are huge and possess powerful teeth, so real fights are rare because the risk of injury is so great" (BBC).

I stumbled into that after beginning the day posting about the death of Peggy Sue Gerron, which felt off because I'd received the clear impression — as I scanned the news on my iPhone while still in bed and listened to the NYT podcast as I made my coffee and toast — that the theme of the day was anger. Why angry hippos? I had the idea that there was an old children's game called "Angry, Angry Hippos," and the rest is blogging happenstance. I can't embed the Attenborough video, so here are some children, viewing hippos, noticing the teeth — which Attenborough says are for threatening violence — and receiving the fake news from a woman that the hippos are smiling:



• Here's the NYT podcast. The episode is "Kavanaugh's Classmates Speak Out." It's not mostly about anger, but drinking. I learned the jocular phrase "holding up the wall." It means so drunk you need to lean against the wall.

• Here's the main article that influenced me to believe the subject of the day is anger: "'The trauma for a man': Male fury and fear rises in GOP in defense of Kavanaugh" (WaPo). I'm going to do a separate post about that. I'm just warming up. I have an aversion to anger, and I have a sense of how that can be used to manipulate me — me, a microcosm of women. Don't make me angry!, smiles the hippo.

• And here's the real children's game that became more ominous in my imperfect memory: Hungry, Hungry Hippos:

After the flood, a hippo wanders in the streets of Tbilisi.

Six lions, six tigers, seven bears, one hippo and 13 wolves escaped the zoo" in the capital of Georgia.

Drug lord Pablo Escobar created a terrible invasive species problem in Colombia: Hippos.

"He smuggled in elephants, giraffes and other exotic animals, among them four hippos - three females and one male."

When Hacienda Napoles was confiscated in the early 1990s, Escobar's menagerie was dispersed to zoos around the country. But not the hippos. For about two decades, they have wallowed in their soupy lake...

Here, conditions for hippos are idyllic. The river is slow moving and has plenty of shallows, perfect for larger animals which don't actually swim but push themselves off banks, gliding through the water. Moreover, the region never experiences drought, which tends to act as a natural brake on the size of herds in Africa....

Colombian people, [one veterinarian] believes, are more vulnerable than Africans because they see hippos as cuddly, "floppy" animals...

"My father brought a little one home once," an unnamed girl told the paper. "I called him Luna (Moon) because he was very sweet - we fed him with just milk."...

Of course, hippos are deadly. They kill more human beings than any other wild mammal.

But there are 5 animals that kill more people. Try to name them in order, then look here. I thought the "wild" in the phrase "wild mammal" was a clue that dogs killed more people, but domestic dogs are 10th on the linked list.

ADDED: "11 Reasons Hippos Are The Most Awesome Animals Of All Time."

"If you wanted to spend the first day of July watching a timelapse video of a Hippo enclosure being cleaned, filled & then dirtied again..."

"... you've come to the right place."

This is 3 days in the Milwaukee County Zoo hippo enclosure:

"I was aware that my legs were surrounded by water, but my top half was almost dry."

"I seemed to be trapped in something slimy."

There was a terrible, sulphurous smell, like rotten eggs, and a tremendous pressure against my chest. My arms were trapped but I managed to free one hand and felt around – my palm passed through the wiry bristles of the hippo's snout. It was only then that I realised I was underwater, trapped up to my waist in his mouth....

I remember looking up through 10 feet of water at the green and yellow light playing on the surface, and wondering which of us could hold his breath the longest. Blood rose from my body in clouds, and a sense of resignation overwhelmed me....

Mud.

"Life is made up of marble and mud." — Nathaniel Hawthorne

"Roses have thorns, and silver fountains mud... And loathsome canker lives in sweetest bud. " — Shakespeare

"I made all my generals out of mud." — Napoleon Bonaparte

"We sit in the mud... and reach for the stars." — Ivan Turgenev

"I have tried to lift France out of the mud. But she will return to her errors and vomitings. I cannot prevent the French from being French." — Charles de Gaulle

"Let us settle ourselves, and work and wedge our feet downward through the mud and slush of opinion, and prejudice, and tradition, and delusion, and appearance..." — Thoreau

"My own brain is to me the most unaccountable of machinery - always buzzing, humming, soaring roaring, diving, and then buried in mud. And why? What's this passion for?" — Virginia Woolf

"They teach anything in universities today. You can major in mud pies." — Orson Welles

"POLITICIAN, n. An eel in the fundamental mud upon which the superstructure of organized society is reared. When he wriggles he mistakes the agitation of his tail for the trembling of the edifice. As compared with the statesman, he suffers the disadvantage of being alive." — Ambrose Bierce (from "The Devil's Dictionary")

"'As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.' Having said these things, he spat on the ground and made mud with the saliva.' Then he anointed the man’s eyes with the mud and said to him, 'Go, wash in the pool of Siloam" (which means Sent). So he went and washed and came back seeing." — John 9:5-7

"The broad-backed hippopotamus/Rests on his belly in the mud..." — T.S. Eliot

Mitt Romney gives some advice to the new President.

Damn, it's such good advice:

He should forget entirely about reelection and focus solely on helping the nation at a critical time. He should dismiss the people who helped him win the election and bring in people who are above politics and above party. He should surround himself with statesmen and economists, businesspeople and leaders. In some ways it would be beneficial if our presidency consisted of only one term. That way the President would think about his legacy and the future of the country rather than reelection and partisanship....

In his second term, President Clinton made an effort to govern more from the center than from the extreme wing of his party, and by doing so, found greater support and greater political success. Perhaps it's a paradox, the less political the agenda, the more political success one enjoys. But now is not the time for partisanship opportunism.

The unions have helped Barack Obama. They will hope to be paid back. I'm particularly concerned that organized labor would call on Barack Obama to pass the card check program. This removes from American workers the right to the secret ballot in deciding whether or not to accept a union. This legislation would do more to harm America's long-term competitiveness than almost anything I can imagine. It would be a partisan payback for organized labor but it would come with devastating consequences for the nation.

I ♥ Mitt Romney.

IN THE COMMENTS: Hdhouse said:

I just love this. It is so full of hypocracy that it makes me barf.

Palladian said...

"Hypocracy" must be the brand name of some sort of emetic.

I think “hypocracy” is the form of government we will have when Rare Pygmy Hippo becomes President.

Rare pygmy hippo for President!

"Rare pygmy hippo offers hope."

Teach your children about the house hippo.

Nicely done. Shown only in Canada.

"All I could see was two sets of red eyes below me and all night I had to listen to a big bull croc bellowing a bit further out."

Man treed by crocodiles for a week.

Although [David] George's two sandwiches ran out after three days, he was able to get running water during the day and knew rescuers were looking for him as he could see helicopters in the air above his tree....

A chocolate bar, given to him by rescuers after being winched to safety, "was like a gourmet meal," he told the newspaper.

To me, a chocolate bar is a gourmet meal. And so, for a crocodile, is a 53-year-old Australian.

I await the reenactment on "I Shouldn't Be Alive." Meanwhile, one can rewatch the episode called "Blood in the Water":

Five friends enjoying a weekend fishing trip on one of Africa's wildest and remotest rivers are left fighting for their lives when a hippo suddenly attacks their boat in one of the world's most crocodile-infested rivers. Three of them manage to make it to a sandbank in the middle of the river, but the current's too strong for them to move. One of the men decides to swim for shore — the group's only chance of survival — only to be attacked by a crocodile along the way.

The people have to keep standing on the sandbank all night. Meanwhile, the guy who's attacked by a crocodile somehow has the wits to reach down the animal's throat and release the valve that prevents water from pouring in when it's trying to kill its prey in the water.

When dolphins walked the earth.

50 million years ago, dolphins and whales -- they say -- were four-legged creatures lumbering about like hippos. And now, they seem inclined to evolve those legs again. Scary!

(You don't think dolphins are scary? You need to listen to this, about the evil version of Flipper: Zipper. "Oh, Zipper's surly. He is uncaring.")

The Smarties tube, an escaped lion, and the relationship between insomnia and my preference for audio novels, two of which are recommended here.

It's funny how sometimes there's something that you've never heard of once and then, within a very short space of time, you hear about it twice. This morning I was checking the most blogged-about news stories and was surprised to run across one informing us that the manufacturer of Smarties candy is going to eliminate its distinctive tube packaging. I had never heard of this beloved-in-Britain candy packaging until just last night as I was going to sleep listening to the third disc of the audiobook of Mark Haddon's "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time" and reached this passage where a teacher uses a Smarties tube in an experiment demonstrating that the young narrator did not understand that other people have minds.

It's a great passage, by the way. Go over to the link and read it. The narrator, an autistic boy, looking back on what the teacher demonstrated, tries to understand the human mind and needs to think about computers to work out an answer. The Turing test and saccades are discussed, concisely and brilliantly.

Why am I listening to this book on CD rather than reading it? You might well ask, if you remember that yesterday I went on a bit about how reading is so much better than audio. It's all about insomnia, my friends. What I like about reading is the freedom to think my own thoughts and go at my own pace -- which is, as a consequence, ridiculously slow, as I am usually rather entertained by my own thoughts. (This blog is a testament to that.) What gives me insomnia is thinking too many of my own thoughts. I discovered long ago that listening to an audiobook cures my insomnia, because I can use the unpausing words of the book to supplant the freewheeling thoughts of my own that would keep me awake.

It takes me several months to make my way though an audiobook used this way, because I usually fall asleep in a minute or two. The last novel I listened to was "The Story of Pi," and interestingly, I ran across this story in the newspaper today that called that book to mind:

A large exotic cat, possibly an African lion, appears to be roaming the rural countryside near the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, the authorities said on Friday.

Trackers were brought in to hunt for the animal after several sets of tracks, far too large for native bobcats or mountain lions, were found on a ranch not far from the hilltop library. Wildlife officials were bringing in a trap, baited with fresh meat, to catch the animal, said Lorna Bernard, a spokeswoman for the State Department of Fish and Game.

A ranch caretaker reported seeing a large cat, possibly a lion, dart into the brush on Tuesday. At least two other people within a quarter-mile of the ranch reported seeing the cat, which officials estimate may weigh 600 pounds.

"Pi" contains more than one passage about a large wild animal escaping captivity and disappearing into an inappropriate habitat where human beings cannot find it. Here's a passage I especially like (and have blogged about before):

If you took the city of Tokyo and turned it upside down and shook it, you'd be amazed at all the animals that would fall out: badgers, wolves, boa constrictors, Komodo dragons, crocodiles, ostriches, baboons, capybaras, wild boars, leopards, manatees, ruminants in untold numbers. There is no doubt in my mind that feral giraffes and feral hippos have been living in Tokyo for generations without being seen by a soul.

Sleep well, read books, and don't get spooked by coincidences.

Wild animals in the city: 3 things.

The Capital Times reports this discovery in Milwaukee:

More than 70 ducks in a basement pen were only part of the menagerie authorities found in [Jamie L. Verburgt's] Milwaukee area apartment after other residents complained of the stench coming from the unit.... Others among about 200 live creatures in the apartment included snakes, rats, turtles, a pair of alligators, toads and scorpions. ...

John Walters, Verburgt's boyfriend, was prosecuted in 2000 for mistreatment of exotic animals. At that time, police found a female cougar, female leopard, silver-tailed fox, monitor lizard, two caracals, a coatimundi, chinchilla and a reticulated python in Walter's apartment in Greenfield, another Milwaukee suburb. ...

(Ah, see: there's someone for everybody.) (Mmmm... "reticulated"!) That story reminded me of this passage from "The Life of Pi":

If you took the city of Tokyo and turned it upside down and shook it, you'd be amazed at all the animals that would fall out: badgers, wolves, boa constrictors, Komodo dragons, crocodiles, ostriches, baboons, capybaras, wild boars, leopards, manatees, ruminants in untold numbers. There is no doubt in my mind that feral giraffes and feral hippos have been living in Tokyo for generations without being seen by a soul.

And that reminds me of the movie "12 Monkeys," which has a great animals-in-the-city theme. (And to say that is to allow Brad Pitt to make a second appearance on my blog today. So I'll just add that I'm not really a Brad Pitt fan, but I do love a couple of his movies, "12 Monkeys" and "Fight Club.")