After drug cartel king Pablo Escobar was killed in a 1993 shootout, his estate and the exotic animals in his private menagerie were sent to zoos.
All except his four hippos, which, like a movie script, escaped and happily settled in the rivers of Colombia.
In October 2021, Colombian officials started a campaign to sterilize the now-thriving hippo population, which now numbers around 80. The hippos will be darted with a drug that sterilizes both male and female hippos.
Environmentalists say the hippos can devastate local fauna, since each one eats 88 pounds of grasses per day and leave prodigious amounts of dung. In Kenya, herds of hippos can leave so much dung that it suffocates the fish in rivers.
Rick Good spent ten years in the newspaper business, including with The News & Observer (Raleigh, NC) and The Greenville News (Greenville, SC). He co-wrote, with Melinda Coleman, Rutledge to Riley: Governors of South Carolina, 1776–Present (Published by The Greenville News), and is the author of Mind Games Trivia #1 (Amazon). He has recently spent 15 years creating original trivia content through Sounds Good Mobile Entertainment and continues that with his new company, SGME Software. He edits The Smart Reader’s money, real estate, and business coverage.
