It takes a village to raise a hippo

This is a story about a hippo.

His name is Lu and he lives in Homosassa. You may have heard of him.

I visited Thursday with Lu, though he wasn’t feeling very sociable. Just sort of hung in the corner of his lagoon at the Homosassa Springs Wildlife State Park, ignoring my soothing calls of “Luuuu, Luuuu.”


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We have history. And that history is one of Citrus County’s greatest success stories, the one I refer to time and again and proof of what this community can do when it really tries.

Of course, we need to go back a few years.

Lu had lived at what we called the Attraction since he was a little child hippo TV star. The county took over the park, and then the state took ownership and now it’s one of the most popular state parks in Florida.

When the state took over in 1990, the park had a few non-native occupants. Lu, short for Lucifer, is one and, frankly, I can’t remember the others. 

We weren’t really paying much attention to any of this until working on a story about too many buzzards at the wildlife park. The late Dave Sigler, Chronicle photographer, came into the office one day after taking pictures of buzzards and said it wasn’t right what the park was doing about Lucifer.

So we decided to do a little investigating. Seems that the state had a plan to ship Lu to Fort Myers, where there was some sort of hippo village that had lost a male and needed another one. None of this was, at the time, publicized.

We also learned that park volunteers were told not to say a word about Lu’s future to visitors and, if they should ask, simply say no decision was yet reached.

I remember sitting with Tom Linley, then the park manager (by the way, GREAT guy. And his daughter Meredith Linley is a close personal friend), and him telling me Lu would be happier in Fort Myers.

I wrote a story and the public was, shall we say, not pleased. You see, Lu was our hippo. He had lived in our wildlife park since he was a pup. It was personal.

The Chronicle Editorial Board railed against it. We placed a coupon in the paper asking for opinions: Should Lucifer stay or go? And, if he should stay, who instead should we ship to Fort Myers?

Let me tell you a little about these coupon polls. These were the Facebook comments of the day. I enjoyed putting them together but they were a pain to compile. We’d throw out a topic, usually get about 40 or 50 responses if it was something testy.

The Lucifer coupon? A thousand responses. We printed all of them, in the Sunday Commentary section, over a four-week period. All but six said to keep the hippo. As for who to send to Fort Myers, the names of county commissioners and governors were mentioned frequently.

After all the opinions were printed, we shipped the whole batch to Gov. Lawton Chiles and went about our business.

One day, Editor Jim Hunter received a call from the governor’s office. Chiles had issued a stay, telling the agency that oversees parks to keep Lu in Homosassa until further notice.

And then, a few months later, the governor and Cabinet voted to make Lu an honorary native of Florida, to live his remaining days at the Homosassa Wildlife Park. How cool is that?

Lu celebrated his 62nd birthday last week (we’re nearly the same age) and I could tell from my visit Thursday that children and retired folks still are excited to see Lu, even if he hunkered in one area during my time there and declined to pose for a photo. So I took one of his signature sign instead.

Lu the hippo is a shining example of what Citrus County residents can do when they put their foot down. That the park is in public hands at all is the result of Homosassa residents who pushed for public ownership to protect it from development.

And the park, man, that's just a fun place. It was a beautiful Thursday afternoon active with kids, parents, retirees and critters. If you live in this county and haven’t visited the Homosassa Springs Wildlife State Park, by golly get out and see it. Super inexpensive: $13 for adults, $5 for kids. 

Lu is one of Citrus County’s most famous citizens. He is a 6,000-pound community treasure because we wanted it that way.

It was great seeing you Lu. Until next time, my friend. 

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