Pongo was the tallest giraffe at Zoo Miami. A fractured foot has led to a sad goodbye
Pongo, a 16-foot giraffe and a Zoo Miami favorite, couldn’t recover from a foot injury and had to be euthanized on Monday.
The giraffe first started favoring his left rear hoof at the beginning of September.
It got so bad that Zoo Miami workers made the difficult decision of putting the nearly 2,000-pound giraffe under anesthesia.
Nearly two dozen people worked on the giraffe. Pongo got X-rays, which showed a small fracture. He also got his hoofs trimmed, and custom rubber shoes attached.
But after a few weeks, the shoes detached and Pongo was once again in pain.
On Monday, zoo workers immobilized the 11-year-old giraffe again to do X-rays and other treatment. But this time he wouldn’t wake up.
“Sadly, the X-rays revealed that within the last two weeks he had further fractured his foot in a way that prevented the Animal Health team from being able to treat it successfully and the painful decision was made to euthanize him while he was still under anesthesia,” Ron Magill, the zoo spokesman, said in a news release.
Pongo, who was born in February 2009 at the Denver Zoo, came to Zoo Miami in in November 2009. As the tallest member of the herd, Pongo “had become a favorite of countless guests who had the pleasure of feeding him at our Samburu Giraffe Feeding Station,” Magill said.
Added Magill: “He will be terribly missed by all who had the pleasure of knowing him and the privilege of working with him.”
