The spotlight is shifting away from Lucifer the Hippo, one-time movie star and honorary citizen, to more native Florida wildlife.
By BARBARA BEHRENDT
Published March 21, 2004
[Times file photo]
Lucifer, a longtime resident of the Homosassa Springs Wildlife State Park, basks in the sun in 2001. Once a star in commercials and the series Daktari, he is not even mentioned in the new park program.
HOMOSASSA SPRINGS - Lucifer the hippopotamus has weathered any number of indignities. Flooding threatened to float him out of his home. The state of Florida tried to exile him from the park system.
Now the aging 6,000-pound hippo is suffering a more subtle slight. As the park unveils thousands of dollars' worth of improvements, Lucifer has lost his place in the spotlight.
Park officials have dropped the hippo from its regular program schedule.
For park staff, no more formal, scheduled hippo history lessons, where they explained Lucifer's presence in the park while tossing watermelon into his gaping mouth. For Lucifer, no more showing off while in the spotlight with his nifty wind-the-tail-while-relieving-himself trick.
That one, which led staff to post cautionary signs around the hippo pen marked "splatter zone," always sent the crowds running for cover.
Park Manager Tom Linley has heard the concerns but says the decision to end the formal programs wasn't directed at Lu, as Linley calls him. The park simply couldn't facilitate crowds near the hippo pen.
The old alligator and hippo show took place in a walkway that ran past both Lucifer's exhibit and the pen where the park displays its many alligators. People would crowd into the area during the show, but children and people with strollers or wheelchairs had difficulty maneuvering in the area.
"The logistics of that whole site, whether people were able to see or people were able to hear, has been far from ideal," Linley said.
When the park opened its new 1,700-square-foot Wildlife Encounter Pavilion last month, it reduced its types of daily shows from three to two. Manatee shows are still conducted three times a day near the Fishbowl Observatory. Also three times a day, wildlife encounter programs take place in the new pavilion.
In the new 175-seat pavilion and one that is planned to open in a couple of years for manatee programs, benches with concrete floors will have room for people with strollers or in wheelchairs. Children will be able to see the program, and the areas will be covered from the weather.
"It's not a choice to stop doing something," Linley said. "It's that we have chosen to do something better for our visitors."
The only information that will be presented now on Lucifer will come in the form of informal discussions with rangers who might be feeding or working around the hippo.
Lucifer, who was born at the San Diego Zoo in 1960, has been at the park since 1964. He was a movie and television star through the Ivan Tors Animal Actors troupe, which wintered at the park when it was a private attraction. He is known for his appearances in the movies Daktari and Cowboy in Africa and television specials including the Jack Linkletter Show and Herb Alpert Special. While part of the troupe, Lucifer was best friends with a donkey named Susie, and whenever the animal handlers needed to move the hippo, they would let Susie lead him because he would follow her.
In the years that followed, Lucifer was a mainstay among the exotic animals at the park. When Hurricane Elena threatened the Citrus County coastline in 1985, park officials stood by with a gun in case high water floated the hippo into the river, where he could wreak havoc.
"It would be the only thing we could do, unfortunately," Garner had said after another high tide a couple of years after Elena. "Hippos are short-tempered animals, and if he got out, he'd be confused and scared. If he got out, he'd tear things to pieces. It would be a real danger."
Fifteen years ago, when the park became part of the state park system and the emphasis turned from exotic animals to native Florida wildlife, Linley and others began looking for a new home for Lucifer. When the public learned of the plan to move their beloved hippo, they protested. Then-governor Lawton Chiles named the animal an honorary citizen in 1991 so Lucifer could stay.
Other than the park's two western cougars, kept on display because they so closely mirror native Florida panthers, Lucifer is the only non-native animal in the park.
But he is still a popular draw.
"People love Lucifer," said Kitty Barnes of the Homosassa office of the Citrus County Chamber of Commerce. While the hippo no longer appears prominently on park brochures or advertisements, she said the local residents especially enjoy seeing the hippo.
The park throws a birthday party every year and, as in past years, this year they offered Lucifer a cake shaped in the form of his age, 44, and other treats. Local school children were brought in to watch the spectacle.
At the Citrus County Tourism Office in Lecanto, county tourism manager Mary Craven fielded an e-mail recently from tourists wanting to be sure not to miss information about Lucifer's birthday. Craven sent press clippings in return.
"He is a very popular character at the park, a very popular fixture," Craven said. "Over the past seven years, we've had many inquiries about the park, and the manatees are No. 1, but I'd say he's probably second or third."
Lucifer's special citizenship makes him "our little curiosity," she said.
Linley said the park management is comfortable with its decision to eliminate the hippo program. "The hippo, while he is an attraction, he is not the focal point," he said. "We have to look out for what's best for our visitors. The change is not particularly targeted at an animal whatsoever."
Yet Linley admits that once Lucifer, who has already surpassed the life expectancy of a wild hippo, is gone, visitors shouldn't expect a baby hippo to take his place.
"I'm telling you right now," Linley said, "that's not going to happen."
