29. The Plan to Ranch Hippos in America
People realized that ranching hippos in America sounded crazy, but thought it was necessary. As a Washington Post editorial noted, eating crabs and raw oysters was no less weird than eating hippo meat, but people did it all the time. It went on to add: “Proposals which at first may look odd and chimerical to the mass of our readers will be seen to be matter-of-fact propositions when they become familiar“. The New York Times gushed about how fatty hippo meat could be cured into “lake cow bacon“. Another publication wrote in endorsement of the plan: “This animal, homely as a steam-roller, [is] the embodiment of salvation … Peace, plenty, and contentment lie before us; and a new life, with new experiences, new opportunities, new vigor, new romance, folded in that golden future when the meadows and the bayous of our Southern lands shall swarm with herds of hippopotami“.
Many prominent Americans, including former president Teddy Roosevelt, endorsed the hippo ranching plan. In 1910, a Louisiana congressman introduced HR 23261, which came to be known as “The Hippo Bill”. Louisiana seemed particularly suitable. Its waterways were clogged by invasive hyacinths, and hippos would gorge on them. They would thus clear the waterways, and simultaneously furnish Americans with millions of tons of meat. Gulf Coast hippos would also end Chicago’s monopoly on meat packing, a desirable outcome for much of the rest of America. Unfortunately – or fortunately – the Hippo Bill languished in committee. Then World War I broke out a few years later, and it took attention away from the plan. The Meat Question was eventually answered in a less spectacular way than setting hippos loose in Louisiana’s and the Gulf Coast’s bayous. The Department of Agriculture simply expanded pastures, and cattle ranchers stocked them with boring cows.
