America and Lake Cow Bacon

Because I always enjoy sharing those moments when History speeds down the freeway, skids on some ice, and crashes into a ditch, let us look back on the time when America very nearly became a nation of hippo-eaters.

Our little misadventure had its opening act during the 1884 World’s Fair in New Orleans.  As a gift, the Japanese delegation presented the city with some water hyacinths.  The people of New Orleans were so delighted by the plant’s lush green leaves and beautiful purple flowers that they planted it in every available corner, from public parks and ponds to private backyards.  The water hyacinths took to their new homes very well.  The plants grew.  And grew.  And grew.  In an outstanding example of “unintended consequences,” by 1910, the hyacinths were so ubiquitous they had become a public menace.  They choked rivers, lakes, and bayous, and sucked so much oxygen out of the water that fish were dying in droves.   The plants even began blocking the Gulf of Mexico.  The federal government went to war on the hyacinths: they chopped at them, poisoned them, crushed them, but to no avail.  The innocent-looking plants proved to be like the horror movie monsters who refuse to die.

America was simultaneously facing another massive problem: a lack of food.  Over the previous half-century, the country’s population had quickly tripled, to the point where cattle ranchers could not keep up with the demand for meat.  The citizens began to seriously wonder where their next meal was coming from.

These twin crises led Louisiana Congressman Robert Broussard to come up with a novel scheme to solve both problems simultaneously.  He recalled that four years earlier, a military scout named Frederick Russell Burnham, who had just spent some years in southern Africa, had made a proposal to bring African wild animals such as giraffes and antelopes to the U.S.  When Broussard and Burnham brought the idea to William Newton Irwin, head of the Department of Agriculture’s Bureau of Plant Industry, Irwin had one of those “Aha!” moments.  African hippos, he thought, would not only graze on water hyacinths, but provide a whole lot of steaks and burgers for his hungry nation.  America needed hippos!

Broussard enlisted another ally, Fritz Joubert Duquesne.  Duquesne was undoubtedly the liveliest member of our little band.  Like Burnham, he was an experienced scout and adventurer, but he also been at various times a con artist, a pimp, a photographer, a spy for the Germans, a botanist, and the star of a traveling show where he billed himself as “Captain Fritz Duquesne, adept and legendary hunter of African game.”  It was this last role that inspired Broussard to ask his help and advice.  (As a side note, during the Second Boer War, Duquesne and Burnham had been hired to assassinate each other, which gave the whole hippo project the pleasant feel of a family reunion.)

Broussard presented before Congress House Resolution 23261, which would allocate $250,000 to import hippos into Louisiana’s hyacinth-choked waterways.  He and his little team of experts testified about the joys of hippo breeding: they insisted that the creatures were naturally tame and born hyacinth-eaters.  Oh, and their meat was delicious--”a combination of pork and beef.”  Many members of Congress warmed to the whole scheme.  Newspapers around the country were delighted by the idea of a hippo in every pot.  The “New York Times” called the semi aquatic mammals “Lake Cow Bacon.”  Teddy Roosevelt publicly championed the plan.  As unlikely as Broussard’s proposal had initially seemed, it now looked like America really would become Hippo Nation.

Alas, Broussard had introduced the resolution too late for Congress to vote on it during the 1910 session.  At the same time, his band of hippo-enthusiasts quickly fell apart.  Irwin died suddenly, and Burnham was sent to Mexico to help protect copper mines endangered by the Mexican Revolution.  Broussard talked about reintroducing the bill, but, distracted by his ultimately successful campaign for the U.S. Senate--not to mention World War I--he never got around to reviving the plan before his death in 1918.  America’s brief infatuation with hippos soon died a natural death.

Louisiana has yet to find a really effective solution to the water hyacinth menace.  Although the state has spent tens of millions of dollars on herbicides, biological control agents, and simple brute force, the plants are as invasive and pesky as ever.

One doubts whether even an army of hippos could have conquered them.