Once there was a lonely, little girl named Daisy who walked around, night and day, for nearly a year singing, “I want a hippopotamus for Christmas. Only a hippopotamus will do...” and it nearly drove her parents insane. So, when Christmas time arrived, Diasy was surprised by a baby hippopotamus under her tree. She named the baby, “Baby” and loved her little hippopotamus. To Daisy’s amazement, Baby didn’t stay baby-sized for very long.
Daisy’s parents built a hippopotamus shelter in the backyard, and wouldn’t let Baby sleep in Daisy’s bed anymore. Baby grew up happy and loved, but soon started looking sad and lonely. Well, with Christmas coming around again, Daisy’s parents bought a boy hippopotamus to keep Baby company. They named him “Bully” because he always seemed to be pushing Baby around.
And the baby hippopotamuses started appearing on their own. There was Spot, Fern, Igor, and more. Daisy now had a herd of hippos! A herd of hippos eat a lot of hippo-chow, so Dad decided to plant a field of hippo chow plants at the far end of their farm, at the edge of the local fishing pond called, “Our Local Fishing Pond.”He used lots of good fertilizer on the plants so they would grow big and feed all the hippos. Sometimes, when it rained really hard, they could see they nitrates running into the pond, making pretty colors in the water.
Ever since the first hippo came, Dad had to find creative ways to dispose of the hippo poop. When the amount of poop got overwhelming, he would pile it on a wagon and take it to the pond in the middle of the night and dump it in.
It wasn’t long before the fisherman got to talking at the local bait shop, and realized everyone was seeing dead fish and not catching any fish either! So, they called the local Fish and Game Commission, who came to check out the pond. Not knowing how to solve the problem, they called the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
The EPA did tests and studies on the little pond and called a town meeting. Everyone showed up to find out the problem and see how they could help. It was explained that their pond was suffering hypoxia-where there were low levels of dissolved oxygen in the water-but could soon suffer anoxia-where there is no dissolved oxygen in the water. These conditions are caused by eutrophication of the water. This means that there are so many nutrients in the water, unwanted water plants grow out of control, use up all of the dissolved oxygen, suffocating the fish. They also make the water turbid, which blocks sunlight to the benthic (good) plants and they die off. The bad plants are mostly forms of algae, phytoplankton and cyanobacteria.
Little Daisy was so sad that her little fish friends were gone. She asked the EPA workers what they, as a town and as individuals, could do to make this problem better. (Daisy was little and sad, but not stupid.) The town then learned about BMPs, or best management practices. These are farm management practices that serve best to reduce soil and nutrient run-off and subsequent pollution. These include animal waste management and fertilizer management.
If the eutrophication can be reversed quickly, it’s possible to contain it to this one little pond, but if left to go on, it could leak into the watershed, the river basin, the river, and then to the ocean. There are “dead spots” in the ocean caused by this type of pollution. It starts locally, but the effects can be global.
When Daisy’s family got home that evening, they made some decisions. First, they donated all the hippos (even Igor) to a reserve in Africa. They let the field of hippo chow plants to go back to nature, so no more fertilizer would run off into the pond. Daisy and her family also did some community service by pulling out dead, decaying plants that were choking out the sunlight in the pond.
Daisy and her family learned a very important lesson they would never forget: Choose your Christmas carols wisely, or they could become deadly.