Hippo Mojo Blog

I was so inspired by yesterday’s post about Orion, the poor hippo with a toothache that I decided to make a little cartoon about the subject. Hope you like it!

Poor old Orion the hippo of Medellin Zoo in Colombia had to recently undergo oral surgery on a bad tooth. Now this is something I can relate to because my husband had root canal surgery last year. Apparently, the 6,000 pound hippo damaged one of his incisors while biting a metal column in his pen. Hmm. Okay, a couple of things here. First, REALLY??? He BIT a METAL column in his pen? Dude, what were you thinking? I could understand crunching up a big ole pumpkin for a little afternoon snack, or snapping at another hippo to establish your dominance, or even chomping on one of your human caretakers just for a laugh, but a metal column?! Even my husband knows better than that.

Orion was not seriously injured but his dentist decided to operate anyway to keep the tooth from becoming infected. Get that? The dentist is choosing to perform ELECTIVE surgery on a hippo. Meaning he is VOLUNTEERING to put his hands in a hippo’s mouth for no imminent reason. I don’t think my husband would have gone for that. In fact, he successfully ignored the dentist’s recommendation to have root canal surgery for over two years. But poor Orion did not have a choice.

Now here’s where the story gets interesting. Not only did the dentist decide to perform preemptive surgery on Orion, but he then decided to perform the procedure WITHOUT anesthesia. WHAT!!!! Please tell me how THAT is going to work. Well, actually, I already know. Here’s the deal: Orion’s trainer trained Orion to stand still with his mouth open so that the dentist could do his work. It took him THREE months. To train the hippo, not do the work. The work only took ten minutes. So they spent three months training the hippo for a ten minute dentist job. I’m impressed by this. I once spent three months training my husband to clip his nose hairs but he still can’t do it in under ten minutes.

If you are halfway even paying attention to this story, you might be wondering two things. First, why didn’t they shoot up that poor hippo with some pain killers and second, do hippos feel pain? The answer to the first question is that hippos are not good at being anesthetized. It tends to kill them. Last year I posted a story about a hippo who died during castration because his anesthetization did not agree with him. The answer to the second question is I have no idea. I know my husband feels pain. I’m pretty sure my cat feels pain; he certainly screeched that one time I stepped on his tail.

A funny thing about this story is that the hippo used to belong to drug lord Pablo Escobar. Old Pablo had quite the zoo going in his glory days. I’ve also blogged about this before, here and here. When his ranch was seized by authorities, some of the animals escaped, including some hippos, who became footloose and fancy free roaming the wilds of Colombia. (Well, they allegedly trampled some crop fields but I don’t believe that for a minute.) Orion, however, remained a captive and has been living a cushy life in the zoo there. (Except for that metal column – that was not cushy.)

Now, one suggestion I would have made, in regard to Orion’s surgery, would have been to raid his former owner’s stash of cocaine and just rub some of that magic powder all over Orion’s gums to sort of numb them up a little before going in with those dentist tools. I think that really would have done the trick. Maybe I’ll mention that to my husband, too, if he ever chews on a metal column.

See the full article here.

Wow, has it really been almost a month since our last blog post? What happened?!! All I can say is, uhmm, nothing. I don’t even know what happened. One minute it was December and now it’s the end of January. Anyway, here we are, our first blog post of the year. And that year is 2010, can you believe it? Only two more years to buy hippos before the world implodes or whatever is supposed to happen in 2012. This year, we’ll be looking for the latest, greatest hippo products for your purchasing pleasure. In particular, we’ll be expanding our notecard line with some fun new designs like the one below.

I'm Rubber, You're Glue Hippo & Rhino Notecard

Something I’ve been wanting to do for, oh, just about every day in 2009 is to redesign our logo. I have finally been able to do that and here it is:

We are pretty happy with this logo and I hope you will like it, too. Please comment and let us know! We’ve been wanting to have a logo with a little more whimsy and I think we’ve achieved it. Look for it to appear, well, everywhere.

Another thing we are planning for this year is to further refine our shipping procedures. Things have been going pretty well so far, but hey, there’s always room for improvement. We invested in a postal scale so we can weigh everything (I am so looking forward to THAT) and set up more accurate shipping rates.

Here’s a pic of the scale we bought. Of course I had to buy a cool-looking one. Hopefully it will work as good as it looks. Otherwise, it will be a plant stand.

Scale

I’m pretty sure there are lots of other wonderful things to tell you about what will be happening in 2010, but it’s dinner time now and I have to go. So check back often to the blog for the latest news.

Lynn McCarty really misses her giant pink hippo Henrietta. No, not a real hippo, but a 300-pound fiberglass one last seen speeding away from her El Dorado Hills, California, home in the bed of a white Ford truck.

“It’s not fair, it’s not right, they need to bring her back,” she told KOVR-TV in Sacramento, California. She suspected more than one person took part in the heist, and that it was well-planned.

Ms. McCarty purchased the hippo about ten years ago from a children’s zoo when it was retired with peeling paint and a broken mouth.

Lynn McCarty's Hippo

If you’ve seen Lynn McCarty’s wayward hippo, please let her know!

You know the expression, “when pigs fly”??? As in, “Yeah, my dad will clean out his garage when pigs fly.” Well, now we can change it up to “when hippos fly.” You will not believe how silly this video is. It takes place in France – those kooky French!

Do they even have hippos in France? Here’s another one.

My new favorite site: WordHippo.com. Go there now and type in any word you want. I typed in hippo (of course!) and didn’t really find any synonyms for it (duh!) but then I scrolled down and found the translations for the word hippo in other languages which was lots of fun. Check it out!

Word Hippo

“Amelia and her beau danced the polka until the early morning hours” reads this clever magnet of Sir Hippo with his beloved Amelia. Magnet is printed in black and white on a flat magnetic backing and measures about 2″ x 3″. This makes a fun little gift or stocking stuffer and is perfect for your refrigerator collection!

This fun little magnet is a Hippo Mojo Exclusive which means you won’t find it anywhere else!

Detail of the Polka Dancing Hippo Magnet

The image is a 19th century illustration by Napoleon Sarony and was featured as the cover for sheet music of the “The Hippopotamus Polka”, published in the early 1850’s by W. Hall & Son of New York.

Polka Dancing Hippo Magnet

Click here to buy one for your favorite hippo collector!

IOU for Hippo Mojo

Are you placing a last minute order from us? You know it won’t be there for Christmas, right? But you can still give your recipient something: just download our IOU and tuck it into someone’s stocking. See this link for more info.

Oh, this just tickles me. How I wish for my very own North American House Hippo!

Singing & Dancing Christmas Hippo

The Singing & Dancing Christmas Hippo is back in stock and ready for purchase! This is a very popular holiday item that will be appreciated even by non-hippo lovers! This hippo girl wears a silly Santa suit and twirls around singing a clip from the song, “I Want A Hippopotamus For Christmas.” If you aren’t familiar with that song (you’re kidding me, right?) just click on the song title to hear it. If you have any kids in your house you should totally buy this item for them – it’s a guaranteed hit!