Animals: Congo

One November day in 1935 a babbling, excited band of pygmies pranced into the Catholic Mission at Buta, in the Belgian Congo, carrying with them a baby okapi, scarcely a dozen days old. They had captured him 90 miles away in the surrounding Ituri Forest, a jungle so dense that only a pygmy can penetrate it. Delightedly the Buta brothers caught up the little animal.

The okapi was a rare find. His species lives only in the Ituri Forest and was unknown to Europe until 1900. That year Sir Harry Hamilton Johnston, British explorer, identified the okapi as closely related to the giraffe, but of a lower order. It has shorter neck and legs, topped by an antelope head and large, furry ears. It reaches a height of five feet at the shoulder. Distinctive are its deep red-brown color, its white-striped legs and hind quarters. The Buta okapi was doubly valuable because he was so fine a specimen. Last week he participated in a friendly international gesture.

At the conclusion of the World War the famed Antwerp zoo was sadly depleted. New York’s comradely N. Y. Zoological Park shipped to Antwerp 325 birds and animals. Thus, when Dr. William Reid Blair, genial director of the Zoological Park, made a bid for the Buta okapi, the Belgian Government saw fit to repay past kindness by giving him to Dr. Blair at a price far below that offered. But the okapi did not immediately leave Buta. In view of the indifferent success a few zoos have had in keeping them, Dr. Blair decided to let his okapi become accustomed to civilization before moving him. At last, late this May, the Buta okapi boarded a side-wheel steamer at Stanleyville and started down the Congo River. At Leopoldville, where the rapids begin, he was shuttled into a boxcar, and at Matadi, at the mouth of the Congo, on July i went aboard a Dutch ship bound for Antwerp.

In Antwerp Dr. Blair was waiting. He directed the transshipment of his okapi (named, by now, Congo) to a U. S.-bound vessel. During the ten-day voyage, Congo was a source of continual delight. Dr. Blair observed with satisfaction that his tongue was so long (14 in.) that he used it to wash out his ears and flick flies from his withers. Congo immediately took to Dr. Blair, who three times a day fed him bananas, cabbages, carrots, sweet potatoes, condensed milk. Except for three rough days, Congo took his food with relish. Normally okapis are browsers. They eat tender shoots from the tops of shrubs and trees.

Last week Dr. Blair and Congo arrived in Manhattan, sped up to The Bronx where Congo was put into a quarantined cage until 15 days prove he has no hoof & mouth disease. He kicked up his heels, seemed in fine fettle, enjoyed a nice mess of elm leaves. One of only four okapis in captivity.* Congo discovered his next-door neighbor was Doreen, the bongo, a rare West-African antelope that, until his arrival, was the zoo’s most valuable specimen. Commented Dr. Blair, “Oh. her nose doesn’t seem much out of joint.”

*Of the other three okapis in captivity, two are in Antwerp, one in the Whipsnade Zoo, outside London.