Right now ranchers are beginning to get into calving time - a demanding time of year. Other than the sometimes all night monitoring of the cow herd, it isn’t unusual to lose a cow or calf during calving. There’s nothing easy about fooling a cow into thinking an orphan calf is hers, and sometimes the rancher will skin the dead calf and lay its hide over the orphan calf so the cow will “scent” the calf and think it’s hers.

This “mothering” thing is interesting. We probably know of cats and dogs that have adopted kittens and pups, and hens that have hatched eggs other than their own. Ducklings will follow someone they think is mom. While these occurrences are relatively common, I just read about a mothering hippopotamus incident that is totally bizarre.

Back in 2014 Jim Paulson of Mitchell and I trolled up and down Africa’s Chobe River for tiger fish while our intrepid partner, Doug Koupal, hunted the always dangerous cape buffalo from the same camp. There was nothing brave about Jim or me, but we were surrounded by crocs and hippos – Africa’s deadliest. We knew better than to stand too close to the bank because of crocs, and we knew we had best not stray too far from camp so as not to get caught between a feeding hippo and the river. Both would prove fatal.

During an annual African migration, a herd of black wildebeests was crossing a river. A number of hungry crocs watched from the bank as a mama hippo observed the action from the water. In the middle of the river, a little wildebeest calf was caught in the strong current and didn’t have the strength to fight it. The baby was swept downsteam. The mother wildebeest couldn’t help, but when she reached the far bank, she frantically scrambled down the bank as she watched her little fellow.

In the meantime the hungry crocs, looking for an easy meal, slipped off of the bank and cruised toward the wildebeest calf. Mama hippo observed the action and set a collision course toward the crocs. The crocs, having already had some disastrous naval engagements with mama hippo, decided to back off. Mama hippo kept on course and pulled up alongside the struggling baby wildebeest and guided it to shore. The hippo’s tiny escort then scrambled up the bank to mama wildebeest.

This maternal instinct of an otherwise ferocious hippo is remarkable. This story, “On a Collision Course with the H.M.S. Maternity,” was written by Michael J. Miller as told to Scott T. Longman. It appeared in the January/February 2022 issue of Sporting Classics magazine.

On the subject of Climate Change, I suspect that all of us vary in our concern for this controversial subject. Today Mother Nature is throwing us evidence of climate change in the form of living creatures that is readily apparent in our South Dakota. In fairly recent times rainbow smelt appeared in the tailrace of Ft. Randall Dam. Now the waters of the above Francis Case reservoir are too warm to support the smelt. In 1960 opossum were all but nonexistent in South Dakota. Today they take up residence in our garages. SD summer pastures now support cattle egrets that we once had to go to Texas to find. Rio Grande turkeys were once a bird of southern climes. Now they are common throughout our state.

What got me going on this subject? While elk hunting in Wyoming this past fall, I became acquainted with an Indiana hunter, Gary, who is now a friend. In the course of our conversations, he told me that armadillos have invaded his home state. I thought this was amazing, and in relating this bit of phenomena with my twin granddaughters, Wildlife Ecology majors at the University of Wisconsin – Madison, they told me that armadillos have also been found in Wisconsin! I suspect that before my column writing days are done, some reader will report that an armadillo took up residence in his hay stack!

I’m extremely disappointed that Mitchell has given up its annual gun show. How can Brookings and Yankton support a gun show while Mitchell can’t? To me, gun shows are as American as apple pie and motherhood. Let’s get together and do something about this!

See you next week.