THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, August 13, 1996 TAG: 9608130322
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B3 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY NANCY LEWIS, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: NORFOLK LENGTH: 42 lines
Nyla, the Virginia Zoological Park's only hippopotamus, died over the weekend, and the zoo is unlikely to replace her.
For more than two decades, the hippo basked in the sun and the limelight at the Norfolk zoo. When it got too hot for the 4,300-pound Nile hippopotamus, she'd just slide into her big pool and doze off. Her easy-going personality made her popular with zoogoers and staff alike.
On Sunday, Nyla died from bowel obstruction caused by a 2-inch, black rubber racquetball she had swallowed, a zoo spokesman said Monday.
During the hippo's monthlong illness, some regular zoo visitors ``came just to check on her because they knew she was old,'' said zoo spokesman Gary Ochsenbein.
``As hippos go, she was very friendly'' and would let handlers open her mouth to scratch her gums and rub her teeth, said curator Louise Hill. Of course, she added, ``Some days she'd wake up on the wrong side of the pool, and then you wouldn't go in there.''
Nyla arrived in 1975 from Nevada Wild Animal Preserve. Before that, she had been part of a Las Vegas circus act, according to a letter in the zoo's files, Hill said.
The circus got rid of Nyla after she went on a rampage trying to find a tiger, which had escaped and killed the goat that was part of the hippo's performing trio, Hill said. The act also included an elephant.
For a time, during the late '70s, Nyla was penned with Horatio, a male hippo, and they produced two offspring, which are no longer at the zoo.
In general, Ochsenbein said, hippopotamuses are not as popular as other animals - so the zoo doesn't plan to replace Nyla.
Surgery was not considered a viable option in treating Nyla, he said, because operating on such a large animal is ``a gamble.'' Though it was clear that Nyla was suffering from some kind of impaction, that is not unusual for the large herbivores, which feed on large amounts of hay and grains daily, Ochsenbein said.
It was not known for certain what caused Nyla's death until an examination revealed the racquetball, which had lodged in her small intestine, which is very small in a hippo, Ochsenbein said - about the size of a half dollar. by CNB