“And Baby Makes Three”

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 560, 12 January 1929, Page 1

“And Baby Makes Three”

Mr. Stork Visits Mr. and Mrs. Hippo • * LUSTY ZOO INFANT Congratulations are in order. Everyone must visit the Auckland Zoo at the earliest possible moment and pay his respects to Mr. Chaca Hippo and his wife, Bella. A Little Stranger has entered their pond—a healthy, lusty infant who was swimming and diving vigorously half an hour after his arrival at 5.30 this morning. Bella is tremendously pleased. Chaca looks interested, but says nothing. lie sees his offspring only at a distance, for heavy iron bars and a stone wall have separated him from his mate, during the past three months.

Past history lias proved this to be ry necessary. Chaca is a jealous

The good news spread through the zoo like wildfire this morning, and' smiling faces are the order of the day. It is considered by experts that Mr. Sto.rk has carried out his task right nobly. His gift weighs about 701 b and is as ’ healthy and burly as any baby Hippo could be. Bella, too, is well, but it is deemed wise to leave everything to her for the present. Consequently she has a pond to herself. The keepers are remaining at a distance, and visitors will be • asked to leave her in absolute peace and quietness. “Nurse” T. Aldridge, curator of the Zoo, is delighted. “We do not know the sex of the baby yet,” he said, “but everything is well and we are going to do our very best to keep it sp. Bella will have to .remain alone with the little fellow for many months until all danger of possible attack from the father is over.” This isolation is the result of a tragedy which took place on September 27, 1926, when the hippopotamus home was blessed for the first time. Chaca, named after a famous Zulu chief, was allowed to remain with Bella. The mother did her best to fend off his jealous attacks on the little - hippo, but within 24 hours Chaca’s fell purpose was accomplished and a mangled little carcase lay in the mud. To-day Chaca is paying for his former brutality. He is an outcast in the far pond. The little hippo is not unlike a small and lively, pig. Its colouring is the same as that of. its parents, and its powers of swimming and remaining under water are already developed. Bella,- who has been an inmate of the Zoo for five y’-ears, is an affectionate mother, and her baby noses her powerful shoulders and jaws when it is not feeding under water or splashing and snuffling about its new home. To facilitate nursing and enable baby to become used to the pool, the level of the water has been lowered considerably. A hippo family is never presented with more than one child at a time. Soon this one will delight visitors by riding on its mother’s back as she swims lazily about The- nursery.