There are a lot of strange chapters in American history, but this one might be near the top of the list.

At one point in the early 1900s, there was a legitimate proposal to import hippopotamuses from Africa, turn them loose in the swamps and bayous of Louisiana, and eventually put hippo meat on American dinner tables.

And somehow, that’s not even the strangest part of the story.

The idea was supposed to solve multiple problems at once: provide a new source of meat for a growing country, make use of otherwise unproductive wetlands, and even help deal with an invasive aquatic plant that was choking waterways across the South.

It sounds like something somebody made up after a few drinks, but the proposal made it all the way to the United States Congress and had some surprisingly serious people behind it.

So this week, we’re digging into the bizarre true story of how America almost filled the Louisiana bayous with hippos—and how close “lake cow bacon” came to becoming an American food.

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