I am thinking pleasantly back to the sweet time of childhood when in addition to a favorite color (red) and a favorite television star (Fess Parker) I also had a favorite animal (the hippopotamus).  Yes the “river horse” was my favorite, and nothing delighted me more than seeing him at the Central Park Zoo dine upon copious quantities of cabbage.

Maturity has led to a more studied respect for the hippo and an appreciation of his ambiguity as a gentle giant.  Yes, there were the dancing hippos in Walt Disney’s “Fantasia” – pure fantasy.  And there was the National Geographic Magazine showing photographs of a hippopotamus rescuing a disemboweled antelope from the jaws of an alligator and pushing the mortally wounded beast up unto the shore – I suppose to be devoured by jackals. 8<( And my favorite was an episode of “The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau” where they attempted to photograph hippos with their young underwater.  Finally, they resorted to using a very expensive remote camera.  All goes well until momma hippo is alarmed by the sounds of the camera’s mechanism.  She leaps out of the water and crashes down on the very expensive camera, flattening it like a pancake – Momma Hippo meets Paparazzi.”

All of these cobweb memories ran through my head yesterday as I was looking at Pictures of the Week on BBC News and came upon this lovely image by Mel Evans for the AP showing a little girl named Audrey Bruben at The Camden, New Jersey Adventure Aquarium posing with Genny a 4000 lb hippopotamus – all grins – or so it seems.  Wonderful, cute little girl and equally cute, albeit of ambiguous cuddliness, animal.

“Behold the hippopotamus!
We laugh at how he looks to us,
And yet in moments dank and grim,
I wonder how we look to him.

Peace, peace, thou hippopotamus!
We really look all right to us,
As you no doubt delight the eye
Of other hippopotami.”

Ogden Nash, “The Hippopotamus”