DC -- Natl Zoological Park -- Elephant House/Trail:
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Description of Pictures: Including my last shots of Happy the Hippo who was sent off to another zoo a few weeks later.
Happy the Hippopotamus Leaves the National Zoo for Milwaukee
Happy, the National Zoo's 28-year-old Nile hippopotamus, was transported on September 28, 2009, to his new home at the Milwaukee County Zoo in Wisconsin. The 5,000-pound hippo arrived safely, shortly after 3 a.m. on September 29, at his destination.
National Zoo staff moved Happy, the Zoo’s solitary hippo, in preparation for Elephant Trails—the renovation and expansion of the Zoo’s Asian elephant exhibit. The Zoo arranged for Happy’s relocation to Milwaukee because construction on the Elephant House interior had begun. Happy shared the elephant habitat with the Zoo’s three elephants and a pygmy hippo. Elephant Trails, built solely to accommodate a herd of elephants, is scheduled to open in 2011.
As part of the Association of Zoos and Aquariums’ Species Survival Plan, a cooperative breeding program among accredited zoos, Happy’s move to Milwaukee will pair him with two female hippos, Patti and Puddles, for possible breeding.
Happy was born at the National Zoo on January 4, 1981; staff named him Happy in reference to the “Happy New Year” greeting. Nile hippos can live up to 45 years in the wild and often longer in zoos.
Happy was transported in a custom-made, spacious, steel-framed and lumber-lined crate built by Zoo staff. (Read about this special crate.) The hippo was trained to enter and calmly remain in the crate to prepare him for the road trip to the Midwest. Happy was not sedated for the journey. The five-ton crate housing the enormous hippo was lifted onto the back of a flatbed truck by use of a construction crane. The flatbed left the National Zoo at approximately 9:35 a.m. and was followed by a car with two animal keepers and a veterinarian.
Upon arrival, Happy entered quarantine in the Zoo's indoor hippo holding area where he will remain for several weeks before making his public debut to visitors of the Milwaukee County Zoo.
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Copyrights: All pictures were taken by amateur photographer Bruce Guthrie (me!) who retains copyright on them. Free for non-commercial use with attribution. See the [Creative Commons] definition of what this means. "Photos (c) Bruce Guthrie" is fine for attribution. (Commercial use folks including AI scrapers can of course contact me.) Feel free to use in publications and pages with attribution but you don't have permission to sell the photos themselves. A free copy of any printed publication using any photographs is requested. Descriptive text, if any, is from a mixture of sources, quite frequently from signs at the location or from official web sites; copyrights, if any, are retained by their original owners.
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Wikipedia Description: Elephant House - Home to the zoo's Asian Elephant family, as well as a single Nile hippopotamus, pygmy hippopotamus, and capybara. The zoo's pygmy hippos are descended from a famous pygmy hippo named Billy, who was a pet of president Calvin Coolidge. Rhinoceros and Giraffe were once kept in this building, but the zoo moved them to another zoo to make room for its baby male Asian elephant, Kandula. On June 22, 2006, the zoo announced plans for a new $60 million state-of-the-art Asian elephant exhibit, called "Elephant Trails."
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2009 photos: Overnight trips this year:
Niagara Falls, NY,
New York City,
Civil War Trust conferences in Gettysburg, PA and Springfield, IL, and
my 4th consecutive San Diego Comic-Con trip (including Los Angeles, Yosemite, Death Valley, Kings Canyon, Joshua Tree, etc).
Ego strokes: I had a picture of a Lincoln-Obama cupcake sculpture published in Civil War Times and WUSA-9, the local CBS affiliate, ran a quick piece on me. A picture that I took at the annual Abraham Lincoln Symposium appeared in the National Archives' "Prologue" magazine. I became a volunteer with the Smithsonian American Art Museum.
Equipment this year: I mostly used the Fuji S100fs. I've also got a Nikon D90 and a newer Fuji -- the S200EHX -- both of which are nice but I still prefer the flexibility of the Fuji.
Number of photos taken this year: 417,000.
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