Giraffe leaves one spot in Mexico for another, seeking warmth, mate
CIUDAD JUAREZ, MEXICO >> A giraffe named Benito started a 40-hour road trip Monday to leave behind the chill of Mexico's northern border city of Ciudad Juarez to find warmth — and maybe a mate — in his new home 1,200 miles to the south.
A campaign by animal rights activists won the 4-year-old giraffe a transfer to an animal park in Puebla, where he will join a group of resident giraffes and enjoy a more suitable climate.
It has been a long and lonesome road for Benito. Jealousy forced him to leave his home at a zoo in the Pacific coast state of Sinaloa; he was taken last year to a cityrun park in Ciudad Juarez, across from El Paso, Texas to lead a life alone.
With temperatures in Ciudad Juarez reaching as low as 39 degrees Monday, Benito set off in a crate strapped to the back of a flat-bed truck. He is a tall load, about 16 feet high, and the roof of his crate can be lowered to pass under bridges.
The animal's head sticks up through the top of the big wooden and metal box, but a frame allows a tarp to cover over Benito and insulate him from the cold, wind and rain as well as from noise and the sight of landscape speeding by.
Residents gathered to say goodbye late Sunday in Ciudad Juarez as a crane lifted the container holding the giraffe onto the truck in preparation for the journey. “We love you, Benito,” some of them shouted.
“We're a little sad that he's leaving. but it also gives us great pleasure ... The weather conditions are not suitable for him,” said Flor Ortega, a 23-year-old who said she had spent her entire life visiting Modesto, another giraffe who was at the zoo for two decades before dying in 2022. Benito arrived last May.
Benito is being transported across Mexico to Africam Safari park in central Puebla state where the low temperatures are about 20 degrees F warmer than in Ciudad Juarez.
More importantly, Benito may finally find a mate: There will be three female giraffes at his new home.
Environmental groups had voiced strong complaints about conditions faced by Benito at the city-run Central Park zoo in Ciudad Juarez, where weather in the summer is brutally hot and temperatures plunge during the winter.
Benito originally came from a zoo in the much more temperate climate of Sinaloa, a state on Mexico's northern Pacific coast. Benito couldn't stay with the two other giraffes there because they were a couple, and zookeepers feared the male would become territorial and attack the younger Benito.
In a video update posted Monday afternoon from the north-central state of Zacatecas, about 15 or 16 hours into the trip, Camacho said “Benito is doing very, very well.”