Portrait of the Hippo as a Young Man

Y'all, the Wall Street Journal has gone wacky. They have a long LONG article about a Swiss zoo is being forced to get rid of a new baby hippo named Farasi because of a surplus of offspring.

In their defense though, it's SUCH a good article. It's about LIFE OR DEATH!

Amid the joy of Farasi's birth, zoo spokeswoman Tanja Dietrich said he'd be put up for adoption. Or else? Zoo policy, she said, is to "put down excess animals and feed them to carnivores."

What the whaaaaaaaat!? Apparently in Europe it's standard zoo practice to let animals procreate as much as they want without birth control, but if there are too many babies and not enough resources, the babies either get adopted or BECOME LION FOOD!

Sad!

The Swiss are understandably tweaking about this and are doing everything they can to save Farasi, including starting a Facebook group.

Jerome Lacourrege, a 25-year-old sports marketer from Zurich, says he joined the Facebook page "because it was a good cause and when you're in a recession and a banking crisis, it's nice to have a hippo to care about."

Word, Jerome. Still, things aren't looking too good for the little chubby dude. Time is running out- once he's about 10 months old he'll start to become a threat to his dad. See, hippo herds only allow one male at a time, and {warning, reading this will make Farasi wayyyy less cute} "in nature, the young sexually mount their mothers if they can."

Ew EEEEEW. Dirty incestuous baby hippo. Nevermind.

Anyway, guess I might as well still show you this video of him being all cute. Try to forget what you just read, if you can.