THE JESSICA UPDATE

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On Thursday, Nov. 15, 2007, we spoke with Tonie Joubert, Jessica's adopted "father" and star of the Animal Planet special Jessica the Hippo.

Tonie was on the veranda of his home outside South Africa's Kruger National Park. Jessica was lying at his feet on her giant mattress (she even gave us a few friendly grunts over the telephone). Gorbi, her canine buddy, was curled up nearby. And Shirley, Tonie's wife and a licensed beauty therapist, was busy heating up the oil for Jessica's evening full-body massage.

We wanted to know what Jessica and the gang have been up to since the filming. Are you as intrigued as we are? If so, click on the questions below to find out if Jessica is still breaking things, planning for parenthood and much more!

1. Is Jessica still allowed inside the house?

2. Has she broken anything in the house lately?

3. How has Jessica's health been since the filming?

4. Is Jessica still single or is there a special hippo in her life these days?

5. Has Jessica gotten pregnant since we saw her on Animal Planet?

6. How are Jessica and Gorbi the dog getting along?

7. Does Jessica still enjoy aromatherapy and massage?

8. What is Jessica's diet like these days? Are there any foods she still dislikes?

9. What else has been going on in Jessica's life since we saw her on Animal Planet?

10. Is there anything else you'd like to mention? ANIMAL PLANET: Is Jessica still allowed inside the house?

TONIE JOUBERT: Yes, Jessica comes into the house frequently. She was in the house today. She loves lying in front of the television, and Shirley plays opera and classical music, which she loves. Actually, she rolls onto her side and goes into such a deep sleep that she actually dreams like a dog.

2. Has she broken anything in the house lately? ANIMAL PLANET: Has she broken anything in the house lately?

TONIE JOUBERT: She has broken stuff in the house, yes. At the age of 3-½ she broke the first couch. A short while later, another couch. And then she broke the double bed.

During that time, we had started out allowing her to come into the house on her own free will. She taught herself how to open the front door of the house. We'd close the front door — we live in an area where there are a lot of snakes — and she'd just open the front door and come into the house at will.

But eventually she started breaking the furniture, so we started locking the door. If we were working in the garden, we'd lock the door from the outside and leave the key there, as we walk in and out frequently. Within a week, she even learned how to turn the key and unlock the door. So we had to remove the key from the door to keep her out. Then she started forcing the door, and we had to replace the door handle at very frequent intervals.

Eventually, when Animal Planet was there with Fred [director/producer of Jessica the Hippo], I actually got a security door, which I'm certain is as strong if not stronger than the front door of any prison in the world. It has a barrel vault on the inside.

So now we're controlling her. When we want her inside the house, we'll open it for her. Like right now she's standing outside the front door while I'm speaking to you, and after our conversation I will open the door and let her come in.

3. How has Jessica's health been since the filming? ANIMAL PLANET: How has Jessica's health been since the filming?

TONIE JOUBERT: Jessica, since birth, had no problems at all. She was doing very, very well. One Monday, Jessica fell gravely ill. We thought we were going to lose her.

We got a veterinarian out. He took dung samples and gave us an antibiotic to administer to her orally, which we mixed in with her coffee. She was doing from bad to worse, and by that Wednesday I was frustrated.

So I phoned the vet again and said, "Listen, Jessica is going from bad to worse. Do you have the results?" And to my surprise, and I couldn't believe it, he said "Yeah, I've got the results back. The bacteria she's infected with is resistant to the antibiotic you've been giving her." I was quite furious and said, "Why didn't you come and tell us we were using the wrong antibiotic after you got the results?"

So the antibiotic we had to use had to be administered intravenously in the muscle. I had to go fetch the syringes and the needles and stuff in town. And I said to him, "You know, these needles are too thin. They could never enter a hippo's hide." And he says, "Those can even go through an elephant's hide." I said, "OK, if you say so."

I got home and I tried the first injection in her arm. The needle bent and I had to pull it out. After more frustration, I phoned the guy again and said, "Listen, I told you these needles won't work." He said, "You don't know how to do it." I said, "Why don't you come and show me."

So he came out, and she was so weak she was actually lying down. So he tried and bent the first needle and pulled it out. The second needle he broke, level with her skin, and had to pull it out with a pair of pliers. And then he agreed with me that these needles were silly.

At the end of the process we had to use a dart gun, which was very, very traumatizing both to me and Shirley, as well as Jessica. He would shoot the dart into her... And I refused to be present. I didn't want Jessica to associate us with any pain.

So she walked off into the bush. One of our servants went to show him wherever she was, and he shot the dart into her rump — a big, pink feather sticking out of her buttock. She ran straight to me and I stood there and calmed her down, and I pulled the dart out. But it was such an ugly, big needle that when I extracted the dart, the needle stayed behind in the body. I had to get a pair of pliers to pull the ugly needle out.

So this operation had to be repeated for five days. Every day a dart in her bum. This was terrible, but thank god that she survived and is doing very, very well.

4. Is Jessica still single or is there a special hippo in her life these days? ANIMAL PLANET: Is Jessica still single or is there a special hippo in her life these days?

TONIE JOUBERT: Jessica, she's still single. She won't remain single for the rest of her life. Males do come and visit from time to time. In the Animal Planet documentary, we had Charlie, which is a hippo bull that I'd been asked to put down. I managed to save him and, you guys know the story, he turned up here. But during the filming of Jessica the Hippo, Charlie was shot.

We continue to have wild hippos coming here. Since about July, one of the wild hippos — a bull we call "Fred," after Fred Casella, because during the documentary Fred fell in love with Jessica — has been living here permanently.

As a matter of fact, Fred is spending a lot of time next to the veranda, about four meters from Jessica. So Fred is here at the moment. This morning for the first time we saw marks on Jessica's back. The marks show that Fred had tried to mount Jessica, but nothing happened because she wasn't in heat.

5. Has Jessica gotten pregnant since we saw her on Animal Planet? ANIMAL PLANET: Has Jessica gotten pregnant since we saw her on Animal Planet?

TONIE JOUBERT: No, she hasn't gotten pregnant yet. As I said in my interview during the filming, Jessica was too young. But she's picked up a considerable amount of weight. According to the measurements we take, she now weighs about a ton. So anytime now she should be reaching puberty and be ready for mating.

The moment she comes in heat ... I mean, we have so many wild hippos living around us here. She will secrete her scent and it will be like an SMS (short message service) upstream and downstream. We'll have so much traffic of wild hippos coming right to the house. She will then mate, and in eight months she will have a baby.

We were asked by another documentary company for the exclusive rights to the mating and the birth. We turned down this offer. We decided that because Animal Planet did the first series on Jessica, if they should want to do a follow-up, we'd want Animal Planet to do the second documentary.

6. How are Jessica and Gorbi the dog getting along? ANIMAL PLANET: How are Jessica and Gorbi the dog getting along?

TONIE JOUBERT: Jessica and Gorbi are getting along very, very well. We had to tie Gorbi up with a leash the last two months. He started venturing into the bush and was ripped apart by a baboon. We had him stitched up, and about two weeks later he disappeared again. He was away for about five days, and we got worried he'd been taken by a croc or a leopard.

Then on the sixth day, Jessica actually left the house and went into the bush. About five hours later, she returned with Gorbi. How she tracked him down I don't know. She still loves him to bits.

He doesn't hunt or chase animals. The other day, Gorbi disappeared once more. My neighbor offered to come speak to me and had found Gorbi in the middle of the bush on his property. When I got there, he was lying there in the middle of the bush with a herd of impala close to him and a giraffe. He'd been playing with this giraffe. So, he's quite a funny dog now.

7. Does Jessica still enjoy aromatherapy and massage? ANIMAL PLANET: Does Jessica still enjoy aromatherapy and massage?

TONIE JOUBERT: Yes, she loves aromatherapy and massage. It's now half past 6 in the evening here in South Africa, so she's lying on a mattress on the veranda. The dogs are lying around her, and Shirley's actually busy heating oil for Jessica's evening full-body massage.

8. What is Jessica's diet like these days? Are there any foods she still dislikes? ANIMAL PLANET: What is Jessica's diet like these days? Are there any foods she still dislikes?

TONIE JOUBERT: Jessica still loves the food we give her. We have changed her diet, but she's still on the sweet potatoes. She eats a lot of sweet corn. We have a sweet corn farmer here who has sponsored us with sweet corn. And we give her crushed maize (crushed yellow corn), into which we add dolomite lime, which helps her digestive system. This is going down very, very well.

As for her dislikes, we have tried to get her to eat alfalfa or lucerne, which most hippos love. But Jessica won't touch the stuff.

But she's doing very, very well. For her protein supplement, we give her dog pellets, with which she's also doing very, very well.

9. What else has been going on in Jessica's life since we saw her on Animal Planet? ANIMAL PLANET: What else has been going on in Jessica's life since we saw her on Animal Planet?

TONIE JOUBERT: Well since you guys saw her great things have been happening. As I said, Fred is living here full time.

Two weeks ago, there was another hippo who was even bigger than Fred. At about 8 o'clock in the evening, we heard this snorting and this noise. So we walked onto the veranda, and looking down into the river we saw this big hippo and Fred having a fight.

It was quite a serious fight, but there were no injuries. Hippos know that they can kill each other or sustain serious injury to each other. So on first contact they open their mouths wide open, and with chins and noses touching they push each other off balance to see who's the strongest.

And fortunately, Fred — after two hours — chased this big ape away. The next morning, for the first time since Fred had been living here full time, he started marking his territory all around our house, spraying his dung on the plants and against the walls of the house and all that. So we've got quite a hippo aroma in the atmosphere here where we're living [*laughs*].

10. Is there anything else you'd like to mention? ANIMAL PLANET: Is there anything else you'd like to mention?

TONIE JOUBERT: We have started a Web site called jessicahippo.com. This was at the request of people all over the world, for us to start a Web site whereby they can subscribe and become club members, and after subscribing can then follow Jessica's daily life.

Shirley has started a diary. On a daily basis, she reports everything that happens on the farm, with Jessica, with the wild hippos and with Jessica's friends, the dogs. About three days ago, one of those favorites was taken by a croc called Lolly. But she records all this, with photos. We have this on our Web site.

People are subscribing from all over the world. The emails we've been getting ... Animal Planet can feel very proud about the response we've been getting from all over the world about how wonderful the documentary was and Jessica and all that.

After subscribing, we get responses from people saying, "You know, it's so lovely, your Web site." They feel like a part of us, because they can read about Jessica on a daily basis.

When she reaches mating and the eight-month pregnancy and then gives birth, we would want to put on webcams so that people from all over the world can watch the mating and the birth live on the Internet. We have had, as I mentioned earlier, an offer from [the makers of] a documentary program that wanted the exclusive rights on the birth and the mating. We turned them down and said, "No, this will be exclusive to the Jessica fan club members."

We would've loved on our Web site to have had her on a webcam daily, even if it's like an hour or two a day. But in South Africa, it's too expensive for us to do unless we get a sponsor to help us.