Rare love continues to baffle

The unusual friendship between an orphaned baby hippo and a giant tortoise is still alive and warm.

"Their relationship is actually getting better and better," said Dr Paula Kahumbu, the general manager of Haller Park in Bamburi, Mombasa, where the animals are living.

The tortoise and the hippo, named Mzee and Owen respectively, shared a bunch of green branches when the Nation visited the wildlife sanctuary on Wednesday.

"Mzee used to be disinterested in Owen but now he sometimes follows him on a walk, and stretches his neck when Owen is licking it. He seems to enjoy it," said Dr Kahumbu.

Swept down the river

The young male hippo was swept down the River Sabaki into the Indian Ocean on Christmas Day last year and survived the Boxing Day Tsunami waves before wildlife rangers rescued him in the surf off the coast near Malindi. 

The 300-kg hippo was taken to Haller Park and as soon as he entered his enclosure, he ran to the tortoise that lived in the same place.

Despite being male and a century old, Mzee did not take long to accept his new role as a surrogate parent and within days, the two could be seen relaxing and eating together.

News spread quickly

The news about the pair spread quickly on the Internet and in the global media as a positive feature in the aftermath of the Tsunami disaster.

"In the days after the story was published on BBC’s website, it got 33,000 hits, which is more than twice what big stories get," said Dr Kahumbu.

The general manager has received messages from all over the world from people who have been touched by the extraordinary friendship.

A middle-aged German woman told one of the park’s tour guides, Mr James Mutua, she had come to Kenya particularly to see Owen. 

At the end of her second day at his enclosure, and not having seen the hippo, she broke down in tears.

"We offered her photos but she refused to take them and left. She wanted to see the real Owen," said Mr Mutua.

But Dr Kahumbu says the hippo is still scared of people and spends most of the day in the water.

"We haven’t advertised the pair a lot because visitors will be disappointed if Owen hides, but we are considering making T-shirts and postcards, and a children’s book has been written already," she said. 

An electronic version of the book was launched in New York on April 29 and it can be downloaded for free on the company’s website. A hard copy will be published next year.

Drawings of Owen

On Dr Kahumbu’s office walls are drawings of Owen and Mzee made by Kenyan toddlers and she has a collection of drawings from hundreds of American children who were at the book launch.

"Some people asked how we did the trick photos and it was only after they saw the film that they believed the story was real," she said.

In one of the sequences shot in January, Mzee is seen with his head inside Owen’s mouth in an alternative version of a lion tamer’s stunt, performed with the expressionless face that only a tortoise can possess.

But that performance is bound to be increasingly risky.

"Owen is getting his first teeth and that should also help us to establish his age more precisely," said Dr Kahumbu.

At his rescue, Owen was estimated to be one year old.

Towards the end of the year Owen will be in a new enclosure with a 17-year-old female hippo named Cleo. But nearby will be Mzee, so that Owen does not feel lonely.