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Hooray for Fiona the Hippo, Our Bundle of Social-Media Joy - The New York Times

posted onNovember 26, 2017
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Article snippet: CINCINNATI — Michelle Curley’s husband does not like the baby-hippo tattoo. He tolerates it, but he does not like it. “He is not a fan,” Ms. Curley said, shoving a lock of her paprika-red hair aside to show me what’s inked onto the concave scoop of her upper back. Ms. Curley was standing in line for lunch on a recent afternoon at the Base Camp Cafe, the russet-colored cafeteria at the entrance to the Cincinnati Zoo’s Africa exhibit. Every Formica table in the place was packed: with schoolchildren in matching T-shirts, middle-aged tourists with giant S.L.R. cameras slung around their necks, and a mélange of zoo employees wearing branded fleeces and muddy boots. The air smelled of canola oil and charred coffee. The cafe is the closest eatery to the hippo tank, and therefore the closest to Fiona, the 10-month-old hippo who bounces around inside it. Over the last year, Fiona has become something of an international cause célèbre, largely because of the efforts of Ms. Curley, the zoo’s communications director, and her four-person team, who started posting Fiona’s every move to social media from the day she was born on Jan. 24 (prematurely, and perilously, but more on that later). Fionamania has swept the country. Videos of her twirling around in the water, Rubenesque and graceful, rack up millions of views online. She photo-bombed a local couple’s engagement photo, and it wound up on “The Tonight Show.” The popular Cincinnati ice cream purveyor Graeter’s made a “Chunk... Link to the full article to read more

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