Seventy-three years ago, a 10-year-old girl from Oklahoma asked for a hippopotamus for Christmas, and instead of a stuffed animal or a rain check, she got an actual, 700-pound hippopotamus. It sounds like the setup to a holiday fable, but it is a documented piece of Oklahoma City history, and the hippo at the center of it spent the next 45 years living at the city zoo.
A Novelty Record Becomes a Civic Mission
Gayla Peevey was just 10 years old in 1953 when Columbia Records flew her to New York City to record a novelty tune called “I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas,” according to the Oklahoma Historical Society Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture. The song was a genuine hit, peaking at No. 24 on the Billboard Music Chart and selling more than 300,000 copies, per the same source. As the record climbed the charts, the Oklahoma City Zoo saw an opportunity and launched a fundraising campaign to, in its own words, “buy a hippo for Gayla.”
The community answered. Area schoolchildren donated more than $3,000 toward the cause, the Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture notes. As reported by The Oklahoman, the zoo needed $4,000 to make the purchase happen, with the hippo itself priced at $3,500 and another $500 required just to ship the animal to Oklahoma. The Saturday Evening Post, meanwhile, reports that the zoo ultimately raised $3,952.16 to bring a 1½-year-old Nile hippopotamus named Mathilda from the Central Park Zoo in New York City.
Mathilda Comes Home
Accounts differ on the exact date the hippo became Peevey's officially. The Oklahoma Historical Society states that Peevey donated Mathilda to the zoo on December 23, 1953, while The Oklahoman reports that the 700-pound animal arrived in Oklahoma City and lumbered out of her moving crate on Christmas Eve, December 24, 1953. Either way, the outcome was the same: a 10-year-old's novelty Christmas wish had become a living, breathing reality just in time for the holiday, a story first revisited this week by Z94.
Mathilda didn't just become a fixture at the zoo — she became part of its family. Paired with the zoo's male hippo, Norman, Mathilda produced nine offspring over the years, according to The Oklahoman's 1998 report. She remained a beloved resident of the Oklahoma City Zoo for roughly 45 years before her death in 1998, which occurred while she was being transported to Disney's Animal Kingdom Theme Park in Orlando, Florida, the outlet reported.
Not Oklahoma City's First Exotic Fundraiser
The hippo campaign wasn't entirely without precedent at the zoo. Four years earlier, in 1949, area children had already shown they could rally around an animal cause: enough funds were raised to bring a four-year-old elephant named Judy to live at the zoo, per The Oklahoman's history piece.
The song's legacy has also proven durable well beyond 1953. In 2016, the United States Postal Service featured “I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas” in its holiday advertising campaign, and the tune's popularity reportedly skyrocketed afterward, according to the Saturday Evening Post. The Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture similarly notes that the song served as the theme for the Postal Service's 2016 Christmas campaign — proof that a decades-old childhood wish, and the real hippo it inspired, still resonates with listeners every holiday season.
