A giraffe named Benito started a 40-hour road trip Monday to leave behind the cold and loneliness 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, the AP reports. A campaign by animal rights activists won the 4-year-old giraffe a transfer to an animal park in Puebla state in central Mexico, where he will join a group of resident giraffes and enjoy a more suitable climate and a much larger space that more closely resembles their natural habitat. 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 (the two other giraffes there were a couple, and zookeepers feared the male would become territorial and attack the younger Benito); he was taken last year to a city-run 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 on Monday, Benito set off in a crate strapped to the back of a flat-bed truck, which was escorted by a convoy of police, environmental officials, and the National Guard. 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.
Benito is being transported across Mexico to Africam Safari park in central Puebla state where the low temperatures are about 20 degrees 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. He had little shade in his half-acre enclosure; photos showed him crouching to fit under a small, circular shade canopy in the summer. In the winter, ice sometimes formed in the enclosure's pond. There were few trees for him to munch on. In an update on the journey Monday afternoon, the director of Benito's new home said the giraffe was doing "very, very well."
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