“Come mothers and fathers throughout the land, and don’t criticize what you can’t understand.”

—Bob Dylan

An interspecies friendship — an amazing love story.

Awful in every way. What was happening to me? I was a baby. Age one year at the time. Christmas 2004. Everything gone. A terrible storm. My home demolished. My mom, dad, my brothers and sisters — drowned.

Owen & Mzee, best friends forever

The violent sea snatched me away. It carried me for days. Until a foreign shore appeared. The landscape strange — I knew I was far from home.

Voices, shouting. Strange beings all around. A net over my head. I was too weak to fight — almost. And, I had grown pretty big — about 650 pounds at the time. I was dehydrated. Disoriented. I wanted to die — and I almost did.

The man who helped me — his name was “Owen.” Now that’s my name, too. When Owen first saw me I heard him exclaim,

“What to do? There are no hippos like this here!”

But Owen stepped in when others were scared.    READ MORE