ROVING HIPPOPOTAMUS

Greymouth Evening Star, 8 May 1931, Page 8

ROVING HIPPOPOTAMUS

WANDERINGS IN AFRICA. Hubert, the hippopotamus, which migrated from the Natal game reserve over a year ago, and has since bedn wandering about South Africa, recently took up his residence just outside East London. One- night he held a reception on the farm of Mr M. 0.A. Schreiber (says the Cape Town correspondent of the “Auckland Herald”). Having heard from his native ser- ( vants that the hippo was in the river, Mr and Mrs Schrieber telephoned to some of their friends, and a party of six went out to look for Hubert. Included in the party was Mr J. Hewitt, and he it was who eventually found the hippo in a mealie field, about 50 yards from the river.

Mr Hewitt and the rest of the party had supplied themselves with torches, and shortly after nine o’clock Hubert was discovered calmly having his supper. When the first light of the torch flashed on the brown hide of the hungry beast, Mr Hewitt was not more than six yards away, but appar-, ently Hubert is quite tame, and not afraid of friendly human beings, for he merely turned round and began leisurely rolling down toward the river.

By this time others of the party had arrived, and in the excellent light provided by the six or seven torches Hubert waddled down to the Nahoon and slid into the river. He did not tarry there, but climbed out on the opposite bank an dhid in the rushes for a long time. At last, however, getting tired of the attempts of the party of watchers on the opposite bank to dislodge him from his position by throwing things at him. Hubert came' out of the rushes and lumbered into the river, going' down stream and thus out of sight, probably to some nice quiet abode he had previously surveyed.

Hubert’s knowledge of the country is not confined to pleasant glades and cool rivers. He recently stumbled across the railway track, which he found so to his liking that he settled there, broadside Oh, for a siesta. A train approached. The driver, recognising something familiar about the bulk ahead, pulled up, then verv gently prodded the hippo in the ribs with the cow-catcher. Hubert, regarding the potential enemy with a cab culating eye, decided that discretion was the better part of valour, and ambled off.