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Milwaukee's Menagerie: Yacob the Hippo

By Tim on Apr 1, 2015 9:27 AM

Yacob in his home at the Washington Park Zoo, courtesy of our own Historic Photo Collection

Forget Shark Week, back in 1913 Milwaukee had Hippo Week from April 13-20. The Washington Park Zoological Society wanted to get the city not only hyped about a potential hippopotamus at the zoo, but to get them to donate the funds to actually bring in the hefty beast. In coordination with the Milwaukee Journal and Saxe Amusement, there was a traditional fundraiser as well as a big production mounted, with two different theatrical performances on the 20th, where all proceeds went to the hippo fund. The Journal made a big to-do about it, with front page news items each day of the week. They employed every possibly tactic, including ‘going there’, by inciting the people of Milwaukee with the notion that the city needed to raise the funds so that we would have a hippo before our rival to the south, Chicago. They even printed a cartoon of a hippo right behind all the articles on the front page to make sure people really paid attention to the whole thing.

The fund raiser was successful; all in all it cost $2,200 to bring in the fellow from Germany. It was July 7 of that same year that ‘Rip’ the Hippo arrived in Milwaukee, so named as one of the plays put on for the fundraiser was Rip Van Winkle. Not that the name ‘Rip’ stuck, or possibly was even used by anyone other than the newspapers and some correspondence with the president of the Zoo. It was less than a week later that the Milwaukee Sentinel was reporting that the zoo staff called him Yacob instead (and purported to have an interview with the hippo where he complained that Yacob was not a respectable name for a hippo. The Journal also had a couple interviews with ‘Rip’ upon his arrival, characterizing him with a ridiculous and over-the-top German accent).

Milwaukee legend states that when Yacob first arrived in Milwaukee, he immediately sunk to the bottom of his pool, not coming up when the zoo staff tried to get him to emerge from his self-induced isolation. All it took was one command from Hagenbeck, a mighty “Yacob, komm ’raus!” to part the waters and the hippo happily popped out to survey his new home and new caretakers. For you see, the hippo simply did not understand instructions in English.

Yacob lived a long life in the Washington Park Zoo, sadly dying just under a month from this thirtieth anniversary of moving to Milwaukee. He was mourned, but then the zoo bought two hippos from the Brookfield Zoo in Chicago, so the children of Milwaukee soon had double the potamus to observe in Cleo and Tony. Yacob might be one of the less storied or famous of Milwaukee’s animals, but I can think of few animals that can boast having an entire week in their honor. If you want to learn more, check out some old newspaper articles, like one about his 25th anniversary at the zoo, look at sound other pictures of Yacob in our Digital Historic Photos collection, or come in to the downtown Central Library to browse the old Journal and Sentinel yourself!

This is just the first in a series of entries on some of the many magnificent animal citizens of Milwaukee both past and present. Stay tuned next week for the tale of Sim, the lion who lived at the library!



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