A HIPPO CRITICAL SITUATION

The Ornery Beasts Were Brought To Colombia To Grace A Drug Lord's
Estate. He Is Long Gone, But They Have Thrived -- And Outgrown Their Welcome

Puerto Triunfo, Colombia - Hacienda Napoles was Pablo Escobar's
pleasure palace, a 5,500-acre estate where the notorious drug lord
reigned over million-dollar cocaine deals, parties with underage
girls and visits by shadowy men of power.

Escobar lived large here in his lush fiefdom 100 miles east of
Medellin, far from the teeming slums where he began his life of
crime. He built a bullring, an airstrip, an ersatz Jurassic Park with
half a dozen immense concrete dinosaurs. He stocked a private wild
animal park with hundreds of animals, including elephants, camels,
giraffes, ostriches and zebras. He installed four hippos in one of
the estate's 12 man-made lakes.

Today, Hacienda Napoles is in ruins, taken over by jungle foliage and
bats. The sprawling Spanish-style mansion has been gutted, scavenged
by treasure hunters looking for stashes of gold and cash buried under
the floors. Escobar is long gone, cut down in a hail of police gunfire.

But the hippos are still here.

More than 15 years after the government took control of Hacienda
Napoles, the elephants, giraffes and zebras have long since
disappeared, given away to Colombian zoos or left to die.

But the hippos were never claimed because they were too large and
ornery to move. Now the original four have multiplied to 16 and, far
from starving to death, as some expected, they have learned to forage
like cows. In fact, local authorities say they represent a safety
hazard - and are standing in the way of plans to redevelop the late
drug lord's estate.

At night, several of them emerge from their watery habitats and roam
for miles looking for grass to munch on. Three months ago, a male
hippo was shot to death by ranchers after he wandered three miles
from the rest of the herd to a neighboring stream.

Weighing up to 3 tons, the hippos are not constrained by ordinary
barbed-wire fences or gates.

"The problem is, you cannot manage them," said Francisco Sanchez,
environmental officer of Puerto Triunfo municipality, which has
control of the mansion and the former zoo area of the property. "They
are too big and wild."

Sanchez said Escobar bought the original four from a dealer in New
Orleans for $3,000 each.

Among themselves, hippopotamuses, whose name means "river horse," are
gregarious animals, living in herds of as many as 40 in their natural
habitat: the rivers, lakes and swamps of a dozen African countries.
They live as long as 50 years and the males grow to a hefty size,
sometimes 12 feet long and 5 feet tall. They vie with the rhinoceros
for the title of second-largest land animal after the elephant.

They spend most of their lives submerged in water to stay cool and
prevent sunburn. As hulking as they are, hippos can outrun humans on
land, which helps explain the periodic deaths of unsuspecting safari
travelers in Africa.

That speed, and their highly aggressive disposition whenever their
turf is invaded, makes them a threat and is the main reason
authorities are offering the animals, or at least most of them, free
to anyone who will come and take them off their hands.

Although there have been expressions of interest from environmental
and research groups from Central America to Africa, no one has made a
commitment to take them, mainly because of the cost and difficulty of
transporting the beasts.

Sanchez says some of the animals may have to be shot if no takers are found.

"They say the meat is very tasty and the teeth are worth a lot," he
said with a smile, only half-joking.

The local government has begun to float the possibility it might have
to reduce or exterminate the herd, an idea that probably will not sit
well with the locals, many of whom regard the animals as part of
their identity.

For Escobar, the zoo may have fulfilled some childhood dream - and
provided diversion from the grim, murderous business of running a
drug empire. Born in the village of Rio Negro, near Medellin, Escobar
began his criminal life as a petty street thug and car thief,
graduating to cocaine smuggling as U.S. demand exploded in the 1970s.
He muscled his way to the top by bribing, intimidating or killing
government officials and competing narcos. At the peak of his power,
Escobar was raking in billions of dollars a year, sinking a sizable
chunk of it into building Napoles, his Xanadu.

The drug lord financed public housing and other Medellin public works
and made a successful run for Congress. But after he ordered the 1984
killing of Colombian Justice Minister Rodrigo Lara Bonilla, who had
threatened to extradite Escobar to face U.S. drug-trafficking
charges, the state declared war. By the time he was hunted down and
killed in Medellin in December 1993, the armed forces had controlled
his beloved Napoles for two years.

The issue of what to do with the hippos has come to a head because
after years of ownership disputes, the state finally prevailed
against the drug lord's wife and two children, who claimed the estate
by inheritance. The Colombian government plans a medium-security
prison on one 800-acre chunk of Hacienda Napoles, and several hundred
acres more will become an environmental reserve.

The Puerto Triunfo municipality wants to make improvements to
increase tourism. The plan includes turning the lake occupied by the
hippos into an aquatic park - a proposal the fiercely territorial
animals are not likely to warm to. Under this scenario, a few hippos
would be kept and moved to another lake.

But those plans are on hold until the hippos' fate is resolved.

Half a dozen residents of the nearest town, Doradal, were ambivalent
about what to do with the animals, saying that they are good for
tourism, but that they should be better controlled.

Claudia Quintero, a weekend manager at Hotel del Lago, opposite the
entrance of Hacienda Napoles, said she has yet to see a hippo
wandering at night, though some of her neighbors have.

"The first time I see a hippo walking up here," she said, "I'm taking
my daughter and leaving."

No hippo attacks on people have been reported.

Restaurant owner Leonel Villegas said the hippos should be left alone
and that the government should invest in "making it even better for
tourists; but don't just give them away. At least get the meat from them."

ESCOBAR, once thought to be among the richest men in the world, owned
dozens of houses. But the mansion here was his dream home. Now, it
has become a symbol of the fleeting nature of wealth and power.

The roof has fallen in, with bits of shattered roof tiles spread
everywhere. Escobar's second-floor bedroom has been taken over by
plants, including bamboo and palmettos. The windows, plumbing and
fixtures were looted long ago, but the floors of many rooms are still
being dug up by treasure hunters. Fast-moving files of ants seem to
be everywhere, transporting their bits of cargo. The three-tiered
swimming pool is covered with a thick coat of algae.

Accentuating the ambience of a fallen empire are the charred remains
of a dozen of Escobar's prized classic cars, which were burned in
Medellin by the so-called pepes, or People Persecuted by Pablo
Escobar, shortly before the drug lord was killed. A local official
couldn't explain why the hulks were brought here.

Visible past the pool and through the overgrowth, the airstrip seems
to be Napoles' one remaining useful asset: A Medellin cement company
uses it for three weekly flights to shuttle executives in and out of the area.

During Escobar's heyday, when he purportedly controlled half of all
cocaine sales to the United States, the strip saw the disembarkation
of unimaginable amounts of cash generated by his drug deals.

A couple of zebras still wandered the grounds until a year or so ago,
Sanchez said, but they have disappeared.

"The hippopotamuses are all that are left. It's because they have
adapted to the conditions here and because they have no predators,
except man," Sanchez said. "If no one comes forward, we will have to
take drastic action."