After more than a month of the world paying deep attention to her pregnancy, April the Giraffe—the ungulate mammal housed in Animal Adventure Park in New York—is finally going into labor.
Early Saturday morning, tweets like this began to appear.
https://t.co/HTSkZMfFYt pic.twitter.com/oPTOmxjvsb
— April The Giraffe (@AprilTheGiraffe) April 15, 2017
https://twitter.com/NinaHarrelsonTV/status/853222197044838401
You got this, April! https://t.co/m8oDdfAtKW #AprilTheGiraffe
— Aly Ellis (@alyellis) April 15, 2017
By 8:30am ET Saturday morning, more than 700,000 people were watching the livestream of April on YouTube. By 8:45am, that number had climbed to 770,000 viewers.
Two legs began to emerge from April as she sashayed around her pen, waiting for nature to take its course. Her giraffe neighbor in the next pen looked on with what appeared to be a mixture of concern and pride.
If your friends and family are not yet awake on Saturday morning, it might be time to rouse them from bed, because according to USA Today, the baby calf could emerge anywhere from 30 minutes to 2 hours as of this writing.
Update 9:59am ET: And, as of about 9:55am ET, the baby is out (as more than a million watched live).
It's out! #AprilTheGiraffe pic.twitter.com/ia96AKZSkY
— Jillian Sederholm (@JillianSed) April 15, 2017
Happy birthday, lil one #AprilTheGiraffe pic.twitter.com/cgI0L2RAcI
— Steph Auerbach (@StephLauren) April 15, 2017
Hello world. #AprilTheGiraffe #AprilTheGiraffeBaby pic.twitter.com/PFCwNQVBXw
— Lance Ulanoff (@LanceUlanoff) April 15, 2017