SEATTLE - Much of the country has been keeping a close eye on a giraffe due to give birth soon at a New York zoo.
Hundreds of thousands of people are keeping a close eye on April the giraffe, thanks to a live stream set up by her home, Animal Adventure Park.
Now, a Seattle man has made it even easier for April's fans to track the upcoming birth by creating an "active-delivery" app.
Tom Horton's app Giraffe Watch will send you an email when something worth watching happens in April's pen.
Horton says his fiancée Lindsey came up with the idea after a friend made a joke that she would pay someone $20 to text her when April's labor started.
Horton built the app over his lunch break and posted about it on Facebook, where it started to take off.
He adds, "The initial plan was that I’d stay up that night and watch for labor to start. Three days later I’ve decided that sleep is a little more important, so I made a system to let watchers self report. Once those start coming in, I’ll verify it myself and trigger the alert."
Horton says he's still waiting on the giraffe birth like the rest of us - and on the $20 from Lindsey's friend.
He says the app now has over 28,000 subscriptions.
Horton and Lindsey say they never intended to make money on the app, so they're donating all their profits to the Giraffe Conservation Foundation. So far, they have sponsored two giraffes so far with the money.
Horton says none of this could have been possible without the help of his friend Amy Sun, as well as Todd Clark and Quint Noble of Inkfinity Printing.
