The Day of the
Hippo
by Walt
Giersbach
Old Doc
Merganthaler didn’t seem to miss his waste
basket made from a hippopotamus foot. It
was some crappy souvenir he’d picked up in
Africa, no doubt.
Eric and Gip
stole the trophy while the students were in the
dining hall and the professors were home drinking.
Then they trudged from the classroom
through the biting wind to the pond on campus.
Gip unwound a
rope and tied two lengths to the foot. Eric
took one end and Gip the other, dangling the foot
between them. Carefully, they plopped the
foot into the snow so a trail of footprints
walked from the highway to the middle of the pond.
It was Eric
who took a huge stone, stuffed it into the
wastebasket and flung it through the ice where
the footprints ended. “So long, hippo,”
Gip said, and they walked back to Eric's dorm
room to drink beer.
By Monday
afternoon, the story of the drowning incident
buzzed through the campus. The biology department
identified the footprints as those of a Hippopotamus
amphibius, or river horse. The town
paper carried the story as front page news.
College health officials warned students
not to drink from the pond reservoir. The
state police said a scuba diver was on his way
from Iowa City.
No one paid
attention to Doc Merganthaler’s plaintive
inquiries about his missing waste basket.
“Next, I’m
going to try elephant water skiing when the ice
melts,” Eric said after his third beer
on Monday evening, “The drowned hippo was
pretty cool.”
“About
your elephant on water skis,” Gip said,
“An actual elephant might be hard to find.
And water skis?”
Eric popped
another brew. “Maybe, but I know where
there's a cow all alone outside of town. Give
me a few minutes to think about the boat and skis.”
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