When we have an animal in our family, we quickly realize that they have the ability to show emotion on a very personal level. The amount of love that they can show to us is off the charts and many of us spend our lives doing our best to make it up to them in the little way that we can. As it turns out, this type of emotion is not something that is limited to dogs and cats. It seems that many animals have the ability to show such an emotion, and that was clearly seen in what happened at Rotterdam’s Diergaarde Blijdorp Zoo in the Netherlands.
There are some people who love animals and will visit the zoo regularly but other people dedicate their lives to caring for the animals that are found within those walls. That is what happened with Mario Ejis, who spent 25 years of his life working at the zoo. He had a personal connection with the majority of the animals at the zoo as he worked on the maintenance staff and cared for those animals personally. After he was working for the zoo for a while, he got diagnosed with terminal cancer. He couldn’t continue to go to work but as a last request, he went to visit the zoo one final time in 2014. That is when the unthinkable happened.
Mario had always made special friends with the giraffes but there was one giraffe in particular that felt closer to him than the others. After dealing with a mental disability for his entire life, the cancer was just something that was difficult to manage. He couldn’t speak at the time, but when the giraffe came over to give him a kiss one more time, it was a perfect moment.
Due to his condition, he was confined to a hospital bed. After being transported to the zoo by the Ambulance Wish Foundation, he was able to meet his old friend and you can really see how much they had bonded. It’s one thing to hear about it, but quite another to see it and you can watch it for yourself in the following video:
