cute but deadly

Okavango Delta, Botswana, 2019. Look carefully for the hippos watching us.

Hippos are the only animal I’ve ever seen that unnerve even the most experienced safari guides. Not even lions seem to have such a universal effect.

We’ve seen wild hippos from a distance in both South Africa and Botswana. I have literally been in open vehicles near lions and our guides didn’t flinch, but when hippos were on the scene, our guides would caution us about the dangers of those herbivores.

Hippos are highly aggressive and territorial. They are also big and heavy, have long and sharp sword-like teeth, and can run 30mph in water and 20mph on land. (Nope, they don’t swim, they freaking RUN in the water, which is hardcore cardio.) Their skin is so thick that bullets largely cannot penetrate. (Not that I advocate shooting hippos.) All this makes them a threat to anything that wanders into their territory. Even lions avoid them.

To quote something I saw online: TL;DR You have a 5,000+lb animal with bulletproof skin and swords for teeth that can outrun and outswim you.

Now picture this:

It’s early morning in Botswana in May 2019. I am at the edge of the water in the Okavango Delta and climbing into a mokoro — a dugout canoe that sits very low in the water and is propelled with a pole — to spend the day exploring this magnificent environment.

For me, my biggest, hugest, almost debilitating concerns about seeing the Okavango Delta involved seeing snakes, being near snakes, and being killed by snakes. I didn’t know until that morning if I would even be able to force myself to go on that adventure. I was so preoccupied by my worries that I didn’t stop to think about hippos.

Our guide pushed off and suddenly we were gliding out into the delta. It was lovely. The sky was blue. The water was shallow and relatively clear. The birds were chirping. The water grasses were swaying in the breeze.

Did you know that when humans are near, hippos make a warning grunt/roar that sounds like motorcycles revving? Really.

There we were moving through the water and enjoying the views — okay, I was also keeping a wary eye for snakes — when suddenly in the distance we heard the Botswana version of a biker gang. All the guides for our group poled the mokoros faster. We weren’t quite cartoon characters running on top of the water, but we were definitely moving faster than I could have imagined.

We ended up encountering distant hippos several times that day and every time we heard the angry warning calls of bulletproof amphibious torpedos. They never charged us and I don’t know that we were ever in true danger, but perhaps I am delusional.

I never once saw a snake the entire time we were in Botswana.

Fast forward to Paris, September 2024:

My husband and I were walking in Paris when we heard a single motorcycle revving nearby. At that moment, I was transported back to that mokoro, gliding through the water, and hippos warning us that they’d happily mess us up without breaking a sweat, so get out of their territory right now this very instant.

I paused for a moment, chuckled to myself about the power of auditory memory, and continued walking.