The Rhino With the World at His Feet

He figured only a boot would do the job. And "who makes stronger rubber than Pirelli?" So Magill phoned the tire company and asked them for a "one-of-a-kind piece." Noting the success of the Reebok Pump (the hoops shoe that inflates to fit your foot), Pirelli modeled a basketball-size galosh with a built-in air bladder. The label on the front: "Air Mohan." Mo wore it for several weeks until he healed, becoming the first sneaker-wearing rhino in the world. Then Mo left him, moving to Washington, and the legend grew. His keepers here called him "Psycho Mo" because of his moody, lead-singer tendencies. He'd let you scratch him one minute and then charge you the next. Like all captive rhinos, he had a thing for self-mutilation, grinding his keratin horn against hard surfaces until it was a six-inch nub. He was a bad boy. Spelman fell for him.

"Mo's case was difficult, and we'd wracked our brains," e-mails Spelman -- who resigned from the zoo in 2004 as the National Academy of Sciences released a report critical of mistakes that led to zoo animal deaths -- from Rwanda, where she now works for an organization that cares for mountain gorillas. Mo's feet had become a swollen, rotten muck, "an exuberant growth of granulation tissue," according to his keepers' tell-all slide show "Chronic Foot Disease -- One Rhino's Story."

The rehab? Caretakers sedated Mo regularly to carve dead tissue from the three hoofed toes of each foot. They'd cut until blood streamed from his soles.

But it resolved only the symptoms. According to her book, it wasn't until Spelman attended a talk on rhino feet that she realized the underlying cause: Except for summer, Mo was mostly kept on a concrete floor, a surface much harder than his natural habitat, a muddy swamp that allows a rhino to balance on its hoofed toes, relieving its soles from bearing weight. The zoo's concrete floors shaved those hooves down, forcing Mohan to land on his footpad.

Thus was born the second iteration of Mo's footwear -- not boots this time, but flats -- cut up horseshoes, one for each rhino toe on the front, adhered with epoxy and covered with Kevlar.

And the National Zoo celebrated what it thought unprecedented: a rhino strutting in its own shoes. "Bet this is a first," Spelman says in her book, not realizing how much bigger Mohan was, how he had other firsts before hers.

Mo is back in Miami now, having left Washington in June 2003, to breed (unsuccessfully). He lives a quiet life, in a non-exhibited part of the zoo -- "a nice retirement area where he doesn't get disturbed by anybody," Magill says, "kinda like the Club Med for rhinos." The surface is soft dirt and sand, his hooves have regrown and he doesn't need footwear.

In July, Mo scratched his shoulder, and he was lethargic in September, and in November he passed a soft stool. But for an otherwise healthy rhino, such symptoms are normal.

Even a rock star has to slow down.