Caution: Hippos Eat Kids!

This week is Spring Break for my kids and me, so we decided to go to the Denver Zoo.  My daughter is 11 and my two little boys are five and three, so they were all excited to go.  I was excited, too, because since my youngest is getting closer to four it is getting easier to take him places.  Today was a very nice day...about 75 degrees and sunny.  It would be a great day just to get outside and enjoy the weather.

At first, we were moving from cage to fenced-in area to glass-encased exhibit admiring the animals.  It was all quite surface level as we moved through the zoo.  But after we saw the crocodile and all of the spiders, bugs, and snakes, my five-year-old Vicente admitted that he was scared of some of the animals. And then we got to the hippopotomus.  For some odd reason, half way through the zoo, Vicente decided that I needed to read the plaque highlighting the important information about each animal.  Now I remember how it started.  My three-year-old Ricky was climbing on the fence to the hippo area and was close to falling inside.  So I said, "You'd better get off of the fence, Ricky.  I've heard that hippos eat kids!"  Oh, Stephanie, why did you say that?

We continued on.  We got to the rhinos next.  Here were the questions: What do Rhinos eat?  Where do rhinos live? Who would win a fight between a rhino and a hippo? After reading that rhinos are 1,000 to 2,000 pounds lighter than hippos, we decided that a hippo would come out on top. We also found out that rhinos are endangered.  There are only 3,500 of them left, because they are hunted for their horns.  Of course Vicente asked why and I showed him the picture.  The horns are used to make ceremonial necklaces for the local tribes.

Five hours after returning home from the zoo, the animal conversation began again. "Mom, we forgot to see the penguins," Vicente said as he was sitting at the table eating a late dinner of breadless tuna salad while I cleaned up the dinner dishes.

"We didn't forget," I told him.  It was just the end of the three and a half hour trip, we were all tired and cranky, and we were hurrying to get out of the zoo, get to the car, and head for home.  "We didn't really see the polar bears, either," I pointed out.  The polar bears were sleeping.  He asked why and I explained that they were probably hot...they're used to colder weather.

Vicente was very concerned about the ice melting on our planet, about polar bears dying.  That's when he said to me, "Animals are more important than us."  And I thought, yes, animals are important.  Maybe not more important than us.  But at least as important as us.  And when one species of animal dies or is missing from its natural habitat, it fouls up the ecosystem.  If spiders die, we will have too many mosqitoes, if cows die, one of our important food sources will be destroyed. I remember when I was young, my grandfather told me that we would have a problem if we kept using so many pesticides on crops, because pesticides were killing bees who were a necessary element in the pollenation of corn.

It was nice for my kids to see the animals that we love so much, but as we reflected, Vicente and I agreed that animals are better off in the wild than in a cage.  And that sometimes we think animals are nicer than people.  Vicente taught me today to always ask questions and continue learning about animals and to look at life through the eyes of a child.  Animals are important.  And maybe we should be in awe of a 5,000 pound hippo, so much in awe that we recognize his power and that he may be able to kill a child.  But at the same time, with the same respect, maybe we should give him the chance to live out his life free and wild.

And maybe, because animals don't have the resources that we have, we should make it our mission to take care of them. Didn't God tell Adam and Eve that they were in charge of the animals?

What would our world be like if we really cared about animals? Would animals live in zoos? Would we keep animals as pets? Would we kill all animals or just those that we needed for food or those that we needed to defend ourselves from?

(Sorry to all hippos, for saying they eat kids. Hippos don't eat kids.  They are herbivores who eat grass and water plants.)