CHRISTMAS HUMOR

Please Help, I Have No Idea How to Care for This Hippopotamus I Got for Christmas

And I’m breaking several international wildlife treaties.

Bev Potter
3 min readDec 7, 2023

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Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash

Look, I know I asked repeatedly for a hippopotamus for Christmas, and in fact insisted that only a hippopotamus would do, but I think I was probably speaking metaphorically.

Or maybe I meant that game, Hungry Hungry Hippos, since I am, after all, a small child, and no one in their right mind would give a small child a live hippopotamus for Christmas.

And where in God’s name does it say that hippos need to be massaged? I don’t remember Sir David Attenborough ever mentioning that, while he stood several hundred feet away and forced his cameraperson to get a tighter shot.

I never heard him say, “The hippo is the most high-maintenance of all the aquatic mammals and requires a daily massage.”

And it’s frankly irrelevant if a hippopotamus will fit in a two-car garage. Who even tested this hypothesis?

Where are my parents going to put their cars? My dad has a kayak and seven broken tents in there too — you’re telling me he needs to rent a storage unit because he…

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Bev Potter

Legal secretary by day, insomniac by night. Ally. BA, MA. Humor, pop culture, and things that make you think. My weekly-ish newsletter is bevpotter.substack.com