She’s obsessed with baby pygmy hippo Moo Deng. So she flew across the world to see her

CNN —

When baby pygmy hippo Moo Deng appeared on Molly Swindall’s social media feed for the first time, it was love at first sight.

“I thought she was absolutely hysterical, and had a lot of fun energy,” Swindall, 30, tells CNN Travel. “She’s just a little bright spot in the world at the moment when there’s so many things going on… Her rosy little cheeks, she’s precious.”

Moo Deng’s viral fame began not long after she was born, when her keepers at Khao Kheow Open Zoo started posting clips of her escapades online. Soon, the baby hippo was an internet sensation, a status cemented last week when Moo Deng became the subject of a skit on Saturday Night Live.

While most of Moo Deng’s international fans are happy to keep tabs on her from afar, when Swindall fell for the hippo, she immediately started Googling flights to Thailand.

New Yorker Swindall knew she wanted to see Moo Deng in person.

“I just love animals, and I love adventure, and so I made it a goal to go,” says Swindall. “My dad passed away kind of unexpectedly six years ago, and at that point, I was just like, ‘You know what? I’m always going to live my life to the fullest. I’m always going to have a sense of adventure.’ And that’s why I decided to do what I did.”

Flying across the globe

Moo Deng, pictured here being showered by a zookeeper at Khao Kheow Open Zoo, is an internet sensation.

Once Swindall committed to flying to Thailand to see Moo Deng, she knew she had to go ASAP.

“I wanted to see her while she has that spunk and the energy that comes from being young,” explains Swindell, noting the hippo’s already grown a lot since the early viral videos.

Swindell could only get a couple of days off work – and she had weekend gig tickets – so she booked to