your own selfish reasons you want to maintain that relationship with going in
there and playing with her I don't with her and all that stuff but that's not
what's best for her you know she's not your baby forever you know that you're
helping her through this stage and we wanted to get her back with with the
rest of her family and in the early days we were a little bit pessimistic I never
really felt like Fiona wouldn't necessarily want to be with the hippos
but I was worried bebe or Henry wouldn't accept her
especially for hippos they they say they're imprinting period is roughly 10
to 12 days after birth so those first 10 to 12 days that's when the mother and
baby are isolated away from the group and they form that really important bond
they learn each other smell and Fiona and bebe didn't get to have that
together so even still to this day I don't know whether bebe recognizes that
Fiona is her baby so much we know she realize is that it's baby we
just interacted with a certain woman to take care of it and work out for it we
can't say but yeah there was concern that like we aren't hippos and no matter
how much we try we can't compare we can't be any version of that to hurt but
then once we have Fiona on the same level with bebe and just the mesh
between them bebe was very interested in her and would spend a lot of time trying
to lay as close to her as possible the intros went so well just letting them
have the howdy setup where they could put their noses together and seeing how
they reacted towards each other made me have some sort of calm confidence that
it would would be okay and then that just kept getting better and better and
as we removed more of the barriers and let them interact with each other and
touch nose-to-nose when we saw that bebe and Fiona we're doing well together we
were like alright let's keep that going as much as we can we felt confident that
we could open the door between the two of them and know the baby would not
intentionally try to hurt Fiona so we were responsible we made sure that
everything we could tell from bebe was all positive the scariest one by far
was introducing Fiona BB that was the scariest day of my life
definitely it's in your mind when you introduce her to her mom who can fit her
in her mouth like oh god I hope nothing happens cuz the whole world loves her
and will be very angry with us it was just so difficult to open the doors and
then just hope and trust that BB was gonna behave appropriately and recognize
that it's a baby and be gentle with her when you finally open that door between
two hippos who you have no control BB's 3,300 pounds Fiona's around 200
pounds she wanted to hurt her there wasn't a whole lot we can do about it be
a pop you don't know how to use creeps or like little escape routes
so we open the door part way so that Fiona could squeeze through but BB
couldn't everything looks good and this went on for weeks let's try it today BB
had all the right reactions to Fiona and most impressively something that I still
can't get over is how well Fiona bred hippo behavior like she was raised by
humans and she knew exactly how to behave around BB it was shockingly
positive because a lot of times your hand raising an animal you don't know if
they know how to be in her case a hippo the moment BB moved quickly towards her
Fiona just sat down and turned her back to her which is a submissive behavior
that any hippo calf would do and I I knew at that moment that everything was
gonna be fine with that so my little kids grown up
now like she doesn't need me anymore she's got she's got bebe fiona was
getting big enough that was actually becoming dangerous for keeper staff to
spend time with her and if you look at the natural history of a baby hippo they
don't spend any portion of the first year of their life alone so our greatest
fear was that we don't want her to be too dangerous for people to be with her
but not yet integrated and with the adults the mouth is such an important
part of hippos I mean it's how they explore their world it's how they fight
its 90% of their interactions with each other so the first time we saw BB
opening her mouth really really wide and Fiona just have you know care in the
world sticking her entire head and that was really terrifying
so to them it probably felt like the most natural thing in the world and
nothing to worry about but for us it looked so scary it looks scary but then
when you go and look at the adult hippos and how they were positioning themselves
okay they're okay with that as long as they stay okay with it then we're good
yeah that was a heart in the throat moment watching watching bebe lay there
with her giant mouth open with all of her teeth and her tusks and watching
Fiona go exploring and literally go in like shoulder deep into baby's mouth at
one point she had like her entire front half of her body in baby's mouth it's
like all they have to do is bite down if they wanted to hurt her they could and
that was terrifying everything went so well inside it almost felt like oh the
more space they have the more you know water they have everything it can only
be safer
releasing control and just stepping back and crossing our fingers and letting
them go out there which is much different than introducing them inside
because inside we have doors and different access where we can always
connect get a hold of Fiona if we needed to what if something does happen and we
cannot get to Fiona because Bibi is dangerous we can't go share the same
space with Bibi once she's out in the yard she's out the r we can't get her we
can't go out there and we can't control if her baby comes
in or what they do maybe went out first and was in the deep end of the pool and
then Fiona came out fiona has been out in the the outdoor pool plenty of times
to knew how to navigate the whole thing she went blazing in like she always did
up until that point she'd only ever been in there with humans and then she got to
the deep end and there's 3,300 pound baby sitting at the bottom and she was
just like oh and she spun around and I've never seen her move faster I mean
she got out of that pool as quick as she could ran back to the safe place and
Bibi kind of like chases after her it felt like be be understood that like
that interaction went poorly and then Bibi would lay in the shallow water and
like try to coax and encourage Fiona to come in we were very confident in
everything we'd seen between the two of them that they were gonna do just fine
it's like she was again like trying to encourage her like no no no this is
we're hippos we go in the pool and you can come in here with me it's all good
we realized what the problem was was that baby didn't know Fiona knew how to
navigate deep water we don't know we don't know that it was like a motherly
instinct but just hey this is a baby hippo she can't handle this in deep
water he kept trying to keep her in the shallow end I know she came from st.
Louis where she was with just three other females but where she was
previously to that you know she's in a whole lope with an adult male and calves
so she's been around a lot of different hippos once Bibi saw that Fiona could
navigate the water on her own she backed off too
it was like a proud moment when she started to live with PD seeing her so
comfortable and happy spending time with her mom and doing hippo stuff is kind of
the reward for us and then with Henry we tried to repeat the process the same
process like let them have nose to nose howdy in contact all right let them go
in together and for BB in Fionna it was instant and happened so easily but for
Henry and Fiona it was very different Henry oddly enough was just not a fan of
hers he was probably the only creature in the world that didn't like her you
had a male hippo into the picture and that's a whole different ball game and
that he wasn't thrilled you know made us take pause that's so scary but we knew
that Henry knew what to do Henry has had calves before and he was fine around
them so we knew he could be good with her so we kind of took a blind leap of
faith our last big blind leap of faith and decided that what was making him
unhappy was the smaller area inside being in really close quarters with
Fiona and so we decided to put the whole family outside and believe in BB being
BB and taking care of you in and putting Henry in his place which she does
readily before and after Fiona's existence
um and we just let the whole family out together I think if we put them out on
exhibit they'd have enough space and if all three of them are together BB will
kind of run the show because we saw how bonded BB and Fiona became and you know
even if BB doesn't see her as her own daughter
she seemed to recognize that she was smaller and you know female hippo or a
mother hippo would protect their baby and I mean we saw that immediately so we
got out there and BB made it really apparent like all right I'm gonna be the
referee and the coach I'm gonna make sure that everyone's playing by the
rules I'm gonna help each of you and demonstrate for you it couldn't have
really necessarily gone any better and it took Henry I think two or three
days before he finally kind of relaxed and let his guard down and he even spent
one day at ten minutes with his mouth wide open letting Fiona investigate that
was that one of the best days because I was
like okay they're good not only are they okay together they seem like they could
be happy together Henry has got to be the world's best dad it's like you got
your kid over there chewing on your lip pulling everything and he's just sitting
there and I'm like sure she's got teeth that hurts and he just puts up with it
and then they you know were just exactly what you would expected after a little
Hippo family after that first time I took a nap was it was fun that that was
a big day that was an exciting day the first time seeing all three of them calm
and comfortable together on exhibit just acting just like a normal bloke would
they're nocturnal animals so they spend a good portion of the daytime sleeping
you that I was a big thing because there finally that's like a unity there that's
a big family thing so getting to a place where they kind of had all finally
learned the rules and gotten comfortable with each other and comfortable enough
to let their guard down and close their eyes and relax together that was a big
big day that was really exciting because I was like huh breathe a sigh of relief
like yeah they're acting just like a normal little family of hippos would now
that's exactly what we wanted and hopefully some of the little things that
we did like keeping her in the hippo building so that she was constantly
hearing the adults that necessarily see them at first but hearing them as she
was I mean from the day she was born hopefully some of those little things
kept in her mind that those more big scary things I mean I think that's the
most impressive thing is that you know she for however many months was not near
other hippos could hear them but couldn't see them you know we were so
hands-on because we had to be that she still retained that instinct and that
basic knowledge that she would need to survive and to be a hit though
fortunately because fiona is as smart as she is and she pays attention she reads
the body language and responds appropriately she had no trouble fitting
right in with them which is a huge relief because yeah at the end of the
day that's all we ever wanted was for her to have happy healthy normal life
with other hippos