I kissed a hippo and I liked it
Hoedspruit, South Africa
I AM KISSING a hippopotamus on the snout. It is wet, not smooth but not rough, dimpled and dotted, with small stiff bristles protruding from the leathery skin. This 3000-pound hippo’s name is Jessica.
She was found as a baby in a river in South Africa during a flood, alone, adrift, umbilical cord still attached, no mother hippopotamus in sight. Rescued, Jessica became part of a human family who raised her and gave her the opportunity to return to the river, but she prefers to come back nightly to sleep on the wooden dock, tenderly covered by a blanket.
I am given a box of sweet potato slices and have been instructed to slide a piece of raw sweet potato down Jessica’s nose and then pop it into her gaping mouth between her huge, forbidding tusks. I watch her eagerly swallow the slices. The maw of an adult hippopotamus is a huge pink trench, a crevice, an abyss, built for eating 100 pounds of vegetation each day. Built for fighting. Built for destruction.
Next I am handed a two-liter plastic bottle fitted with a long nipple. It is filled with rooibos tea, a traditional South African drink made from the leaves of a shrub. It is Jessica’s favorite beverage, I learn. She greedily sucks the tea from the bottle I hold. Then I am told to go ahead and kiss her.
I cautiously lean over her huge head and brush her snout with my lips. I think about river water, mud, salmonella, the person who planted a kiss on Jessica before me. I gently stroke her head. I think she looks like she is smiling, however a smile might look on a hippo.
I’ve kissed many people, animals and things in my life, some appropriate, some not. Now I can say, I kissed a hippopotamus.
