The tortoise and the care
From Reuters (with a photo here):
NAIROBI (Reuters) – A 120-year-old giant tortoise living in a Kenyan sanctuary has become inseparable from a baby hippo rescued by game wardens, officials said on Thursday.
The year-old hippo calf christened Owen was rescued last month, suffering from dehydration after being separated from his herd in a river that drains into the Indian Ocean.
“When we released Owen into the enclosure, he lumbered to the tortoise which has a dark gray color similar to grown up hippos,” Sabine Baer, rehabilitation and ecosystems manager at the park, told Reuters.
She said the hippo’s chances of survival in another herd were very slim, predicting that a dominant male would have killed him.
However, Owen’s relationship with the Aldabran tortoise named Mzee, Swahili for old man, may end soon. The sanctuary plans to place Owen with Cleo, a lonely female hippo.
My theory: The tortoise is desperately trying to get away…but no one can tell. [Thanks to Mark Dionne for the link.]
I thought the same thing–it’s like a dog or cat with a baby in the house, when the baby wants to play with the doggie or kitty. Except this time, the baby is the faster one.
I wonder if the tortoise is trying to figure out whether the rhino is the tortoise equivalent of Superman, what with the speed and the horn and so on, or if it thinks the rhino makes for a rather pathetic tortoise, since it can’t retract its head or feet and its back is so squishy.