Posted on 04/23/2010 2:16:19 PM PDT by Shermy
Belgrade - Mujo the alligator saw his home destroyed by German bombers flying over Belgrade 69 years ago. But he survived and is now believed to be the oldest animal of his kind in captivity.
Mujo was brought to the Serbian capital from a zoo in Germany as a young adult in 1937, along with a mate, according to Belgrade zoo director Vuk Bojovic, 60.
"I remember seeing him when I was a toddler,just as he is today, " he says.
The alligator was at the zoo when World War II came to Yugoslavia, with the German Luftwaffe's carpet bombing of Belgrade in April 1941. Bombs heavily damaged the capital's zoo and killed many animals.
Mujo and his mate survived another big bombing raid three years later, when US planes attacked the city, then under German occupation.
The bombs destroyed the zoo's archives and turned Mujo's exact age, origin, and even sex, into a mystery.
"The papers were burned. We only have the stories told by workers and visitors. When I arrived, I talked to the oldest workers, one of whom had been with the zoo since 1936," Bojovic said.
Mujo's sex will eventually be determined, but not before he dies. "He is too old for an examination and we don't want to upset him," Bojovic says.
A sculptor by vocation, Bojovic took charge of the then decrepit, zoo in 1988. Tirelessly appealing for donations, volunteers and any other help, he managed to turn the park in the heart of Belgrade's medieval Kalemegdan fortress into a well-visited, well-stocked zoo.
Mujo's mate survived the war, but was killed sometime in the 1950s, when a worker accidentally released water from the heating system into the alligator pool, virtually cooking the animal.
"Our Mujo was lucky again because he was not in the pool at the time," Bojovic says.
The alligator remained without a companion, first because it seems that nobody cared to provide one for him, and now because he is too old and a new mate would only upset him.
Mujo even lived to see the return of American bombers in their intervention against Serbia over Kosovo, in 1999, though that time carpet bombing was replaced by precision strikes.
Rarely moving, Mujo's physical appearance has remained unchanged for many years. In the past, he has wallowed in coins which children and even adults threw at him in a futile bid to provoke a reaction.
The coin-throwing has long been banned and the ban is strictly enforced by guards, who have become more vigilant and less eager to collect the cash from the alligator pool.
Mujo has recently stopped eating fish, though he still devours his once-a-week meal of meat, the guards say.
"How much longer has he got? We can't say, but we can say that we will do everything to let him spend his remaining days in peace and dignity," Bojovic says.
Mujo the gator
Reminded me of
Marjan the lion, of Kabul’s zoo. Similar names, both war vets too.
Don't ask don't tell.
Couldn’t they somehow perform a DNA test on him?
By luck, there's a gator shot at the zoo's wiki site.
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Аллигатор Муя (Муја) - The gator's name is Muja
I guess the photographer thinks its a female???
The alligator’s name in Serbian is Muja—I don’t think the photographer had anything to do with the form of the name. The zoo’s website uses the masculine pronoun to refer to the alligator, but may be a “default” form (saying “he” rather than “he or she” when it’s not definitely a “she”).
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