A couple of weeks ago, my friend Carolyn and I spent a day at the Los Angeles Zoo where, thanks to a special "in," we got to go into the hippopotamus compound and feed the hippos. This mostly consisted of lobbing apples and heads of Romaine lettuce into yawning mouths…and if you've never done this, let me describe the experience…
You ever play Skee Ball? Of course you have. You would have lived a sheltered, deprived life if you'd never played Skee Ball. Well, this is just like Skee Ball except that instead of a wooden ball, you're using a head of lettuce…instead of rolling the ball, you're tossing the head of lettuce…and instead of trying to get it into the little round hole that says "100," you're trying to get it into the gaping maw of a creature the size of a Mazda. The hippo just stands there, wanting more, more, more even if hasn't bothered to swallow or even chew the last forty things you hurled at his uvula.
And then the real strange/cute thing comes when they close their mouths for a moment. I don't know if you can tell it from the above photo but they have these massive folds of skin on both sides of their yaps and when they close them, the folds curl up…and it's like the hippopotamus is smiling at you. (But not for long because they immediately open their mouths again and you can almost hear a little voice going, "In here, stupid" as you reach for another volley of Romaine. By the time the hippo has "enough," your pitching arm could be like Sandy Koufax's used to be after nine scoreless innings, swollen to Popeye dimensions.)
I posted some photos of this before but I just came across this one I took that day and I decided you needed another, closer look. You might want to wait until after dinner to take it.