Pandas Get Star Treatment in San Diego

A pair of pandas, all black eyes and snowball fur and perfect cuddles, have taken San Diego by love.

Pandamonium. Pandamania. Typical coinage for this realm and reign that began in July when Basi ( Ba-see , female, age 7) and Yuan Yuan ( Yen-yen , male, 6) arrived at San Diego Zoo from China’s Fuzhou Zoo for 200 days of zoological glasnost.

“Pandas are such a hot item in San Diego that even our archrival, Sea World, is selling panda T-shirts,” enthused Jeff Jouett, zoo spokesman and panda press agent (and loving every minute of it). “There’s a song on radio called ‘La Panda.’ There will be panda questions on ‘Hollywood Squares.’

“Media attention has run the gamut from National Geographic to the National Enquirer.

“We’ve sold 100,000 panda T-shirts . . . we can’t log merchandise into the computer and get the stuff out fast enough . . . attendance in August was up 30.5% over August, 1986, our best month ever,” Jouett said.

The pandas, of course, are rollicking in the rewards of such success.

They get to do whatever they please whenever they feel like it. No expense nor indulgence is spared to see that they remain fit, well fed and content.

No cages for these delegates of a dwindling species . . . but their own pandaminium (the zoo’s former leopard house, converted at a cost of $500,000) with separate bedrooms, a kitchen, central air conditioning fed through fake rocks, European birch trees--but zero privacy. And no pool.

“We couldn’t take chances with their health so they’re monitored 24 hours a day by closed-circuit television,” Jouett explained. “We were going to put in a pool, but the Chinese said it wasn’t necessary because the pandas shampoo themselves daily with shower wands.”

No rigid schedule of public activities for these superstars . . . but exercise sessions whenever they’re awake and in the mood for cycling, slam dunking, lifting weights or riding a teeter board and rocking horse. That regimen, however, has caused some rumblings among purists who see a definite line between zoos and the circus.

“It’s a cultural quirk, something (training) that seems undignified to Western viewpoints,” Jouett said. “It probably goes right by 85% of the people, but we’re still calling it exercise. ‘Tricks’ is forbidden. ‘Behaviors’ are OK. But no ‘performing pandas.’ ”

Also, no table scraps or fast-food egg rolls for their rain-forest appetites . . . but 22 pounds of bamboo per day per panda, plus rice, bran, fruit salad, cod liver oil, calcium and sugar-cane treats.

“We also get them red dates from Woo Chee Chong’s, a Chinese grocery store on 16th Street, and royal jelly bee pollen from the Natural Food Pantry,” Jouett said.

As baby sitters, Basi and Yuan Yuan have their Chinese keepers and a veterinarian from the Fuzhou Zoo. The pandas are insured for $500,000 and San Diego Zoo is paying the China Wildlife Assn. (“We’ve agreed not to say how much but it’s . . . several hundred thousand dollars”) for their appearance. They are weighed daily. A battery of medical equipment--including an electrocardiogram machine--awaits their first snuffle.

Yuan Yuan’s response to the kindness was quite dramatic.

He tried to escape.

Frisky from a shower, Yuan Yuan climbed one of the birch saplings in his compound. It bowed. He climbed higher. Soon, panda and tree were within reach of the top of a glass wall separating Yuan Yuan from freedom and downtown San Diego. Then the tree broke.

Yuan Yuan did a triple back gainer, picked himself up and started up a second tree.

He made it to the edge again. That tree broke. So did the next. Finally, all of Yuan Yuan’s makeshift ladders were crippled.

“But as he climbed, 350 people were cheering him on,” Jouett added. “If he’d got out, we would have had 350 people running up to have their picture taken with the panda.”

For San Diego Zoo hours and prices, call (619) 55-PANDA.