Leningradskiy Zoopark

This guide to Leningradskiy Zoopark in Saint Petersburg opens on September 8, 1941, the day a German bomb hits the elephant house as the Nazis close the siege ring around the city. It follows keeper Yevdokia Dashina's decision that a hippopotamus named Beauty would survive the blockade, and the daily routine she built around it: boiling sawdust into porridge, hauling water from the Neva by sledge. Listen for the old elephant house nearby as you take in what one keeper decided to give her animal.