Giraffe Bids a Touching Farewell to a Dying Zoo Worker

A giraffe bids a touching farewell to a dying worker who had spent his entire adult life cleaning their enclosure at a Dutch zoo.

Known only as Mario, the 54-year-old maintenance worker, is suffering from a terminal cancer. He wanted his hospital bed be wheeled into the giraffe enclosure at Rotterdam’s Diergaarde Blijdorp zoo. Suddenly something tear-jerking happened. One of the giraffes approached the man, and appeared to give him a kiss goodbye.

‘These animals recognised him, and felt that (things aren’t) going well with him,’ Kees Veldboer, founder of the Ambulance Wish Foundation – which transported Mario to the zoo – told Dutch newspaper Algemeen Dagblad.