Keepers shot and killed a 17-year-old western lowland gorilla named Harambe while rescuing the child. It's a tactic the zoo used in May 2016 after a young boy climbed through a barrier and fell into a gorilla enclosure. The zoo's strategy is to tell Fiona's story as it unfolds, good or bad. This gif is what made me love Fiona the babby hippo. "We've tried a couple times to say, 'If we're bombarding you with Fiona madness, we'll stop,' " Yelton says. Marketing director Chad Yelton says attempts at scaling back were met with resistance.
#SO BABY PULL ME CLOSER LIKE THAT KID IN YOUR ENCLOSURE FACEBOOK UPDATE#
The zoo has posted a baby hippo update almost daily since Fiona's birth. Overall, the zoo estimates Fiona has generated $2 million to $3 million for the local economy in Cincinnati. And they donated part of the proceeds to the zoo. Local businesses came out with hippo-branded everything: T-shirts, calendars, ice cream, even beer. The zoo got hundreds of letters from children, themselves born premature, telling Fiona: "I made it, and you will, too." "From a national and global perspective, the amount of love and support and positive outpouring for this little baby hippo has been incredible and, in my mind at least, has given me a little bit of a renewed faith in humanity," Gorsuch says. No one had ever hand-reared a premature hippo before so she and the zoo's team had to learn on the fly, even calling on nurses from the vascular access unit at Cincinnati Children's Hospital to start a special IV when Fiona stopped eating. She was one of the first people to see and hold the baby hippo. although she is quite slimy," laughs curator of mammals Christina Gorsuch. "I think people, often when they come see her, are surprised that we're not hugging on her or kissing on her or something like that. Twenty-seven million people watched The Fiona Show on Facebook. People say they love her wiggly ears, the distinctive roll of fat around her neck and her playful nature.
![so baby pull me closer like that kid in your enclosure facebook so baby pull me closer like that kid in your enclosure facebook](https://pics.onsizzle.com/so-baby-pull-me-closer-like-the-kid-in-your-3824928.png)
![so baby pull me closer like that kid in your enclosure facebook so baby pull me closer like that kid in your enclosure facebook](https://i2-prod.mirror.co.uk/incoming/article8085809.ece/ALTERNATES/n615/MAIN-Parents-of-child-that-fell-into-Gorilla-enclosure.jpg)
Someday she is going to be closer to 3,000 pounds.