A Pet Hippo Goes Wrong

You don’t want a hippopotamus, for Christmas or otherwise, cuz they will ghost your ass. Precise data is sketchy, but it’s certainly one of the more lethal mammals, which is why they make for terrible pets. South African farmer Marius Els refused to believe it, adopting a baby hippo and naming him Humphrey. Guess what happened next. Go ahead, guess.

--On This Day in History Shit Went Down: November 12, 2011--

Hippos prefer mostly plants but are omnivorous and will eat a motherfucker. With the exception of the now dozens of wild “cocaine hippos” Pablo Escobar illegally imported into Colombia in the 1980s that have been breeding and thriving since the drug lord’s death in a 1993 shootout, hippos are found in the southern two-thirds of the African continent as well as along the length of the Nile River. The males can grow to weigh a whopping 10,000 pounds, equivalent to about three Honda Civics. Even giant fucking crocodiles, which have been bitten in half by hippos, are smart enough to keep their distance from these danger potatoes. But not Marius Els.

In 2005, Els, a former army major, adopted the five-month-old male hippo from some people who said yeah he’s getting too big to handle. Marius loved the not-so-little guy, even though such love was obviously unrequited. Humphrey the hippo was “like a son” to Els, he said. Yeah, what about that time a man and his actual human son, who were paddling their canoe down the river near Els’s farm, spent two hours hiding in a tree because sweet Humphrey went on a goddamn rampage?

That wasn’t the only sign that Humphrey was a dangerous wild animal and not a tame pet. Over the six years that Els let the hippo roam his 400-acre farm, Humphrey often proved a menace. He killed cattle and regularly broke out of his enclosure to chase golfers off the nearby course. Considering that a hippo can run 30 goddamn miles an hour, that must have been fucking terrifying. You’re just trying to get in a round of whack-fuck and some five-ton nightmare semiaquatic ungulate with incisors the size of your fucking forearm comes galloping toward you as fast as a German Shepherd can run. I was putting for birdie, goddammit!

Humphrey may have let Marius ride him sometimes, but his luck ran out on November 12, 2011. The totally not-a-pet hippo mauled the shit out of 40-year-old Els, holding him underwater until he drowned. The hippo also bit him several times, but reports that Humphrey “ate” Els were exaggerated. Nevertheless, Els’ injuries were described as “horrific.”

Els once said of Humphrey, “I trust him with my heart.” That trust was obviously misplaced.

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